The Importance of Food Prices in 2024 Election: Results from the Gardner Food & Agricultural Policy Survey

The election in November returned former President Donald Trump to office. Much of the post-election discussion centered on the impact of inflation, including some mentions on the importance of high food prices (e.g., Horsley, 2024; Lowrey, 2024; Sheffey and Hoff, 2024). Over the past two years, the Gardner Food and Agricultural Policy Survey (GFAPS) has tracked issues relating to perceptions of food prices, often connecting the results to political preferences. For example, we have previously shown perceptions of affordability continued to drop (farmdoc daily, June 10, 2024; September 10, 2023) and concerns about inflation have remained persistently high, especially for Republican respondents (farmdoc daily, September 16, 2024). As candidates on the presidential campaign trail made promises to lower food prices, our results showed that the promises were landing with the public and that there was stronger belief that Republicans would be best suited for the job (farmdoc daily, August 26, 2024). In this post, we review results from the eleventh wave of the GFAPS, conducted in November in the days following the presidential election. We specifically asked about what issues – including the economy and cost of living/inflation – impacted individuals’ voting decisions.