Americans on economy ahead of 2026 midterms

All right, we pivot now to our CBS News polling on the economy. You're looking at Chief White House Correspondent Nancy Cordes in our DC bureau. Nancy, good morning to you. There's so much that the polling discovered. I want to drill into one aspect. It shows just 22% of Americans expect the economy to be booming over the next year. People tend to vote based on the economy more than any other issue. So how might this play into the midterms? Well, typically what we see historically is that the party in power suffers when Americans think that the economy is heading in the wrong direction. That certainly was the case for Democrats in the last election, the presidential election, and it's something that the Trump administration is worried about now. That's why they keep sending the president out to give speeches about the economy. They insist that his focus in this stretch, this year from now until midterm elections, is going to be on the economy, although other issues continue to creep in. What we've seen over time is that even if administrations insist that they're doing everything that they can on the economy, if Americans don't feel like their economic situation is getting better, then that party tends to suffer in the midterms. So glad you emphasized how people feel, Nancy, because sometimes the data is different than how people feel. And the other piece feeding into that feeling is the job opportunities out there, and yesterday, the Labor Department reported December job openings were at their lowest level since 2020. Our polling shows just 28% of people feel secure in their own job. How does that add to people's nerves and their perception of President Trump's economy? Yeah, President Trump increasingly in interviews, in Q&As with reporters has been insisting that the economy is actually really good but that he just has bad PR, and they're not getting the message out about how great the economic indicators are. It's very reminiscent of what we heard from President Biden in the last administration who said people don't understand how good the economy really is. Yes, we know that prices have gone up as a result of COVID and tangled supply chains, but we've done everything we can to bring them back down. What that situation showed is that it's not enough to say you just have bad PR. If the American people are saying that they're frustrated, then that is something that you have to pay attention to.

Yeah, it may encourage some to change their minds on who they vote for, but we shall see. Nancy, thanks so much. Great to see you this Friday. You're welcome.