President Donald Trump last year promised voters lower grocery prices “starting on Day One” of his second term, but so far, prices of staple foods have only continued to rise.
A poll released by Navigator Research on Friday found that most voters have noticed the continued increase in grocery prices, and that they pin the blame on Trump and the Republican Party.
Overall, the poll found that 54% of voters in swing congressional districts think that Trump’s policies have caused prices to go up, whereas just 31% think they’ve caused prices to go down. Focusing specifically on groceries, 54% of these voters blamed Trump’s tariffs for increasing food prices.
On Thursday, a different poll conducted by The Harris Poll and commissioned by Axios found that voters are anxious about grocery prices, with 47% of voters saying that groceries are harder to afford now than they were one year ago, while just 19% said groceries are easier to afford.
Axios noted in its report on the poll that voters have had to deal with particularly steep increases in staple goods such as ground beef, whose price has increased 13% over the last year; coffee, which has seen a price increase of 21% over the last year; and eggs, whose price has posted a year-over-year increase of 11%.
The price of coffee in particular could be a vulnerability for Trump, given that he is levying hefty 50% tariffs on Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of coffee.
John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll, told Axios that grocery prices have become “such a visible signal that life is harder today than it was even last year” and that voters “don’t feel like things are changing fast enough.”
“This is going to be a significant issue for the president,” he added.
These polls line up with an earlier Associated Press poll, which found that 53% of Americans believe the cost of groceries is a “major source of stress,” which is higher than the percentage of Americans who say the same thing about the cost of housing, healthcare, and childcare.
Anxiety about grocery prices is particularly strong among Americans earning $30,000 or less per year, as nearly two-thirds of them described paying for groceries as a “major source of stress.”
