Inflation and increased trust in the GOP to handle the economy are becoming real problems for Democrats

• Inflation and voter perceptions about the economy are emerging as serious problems for Democrats.
• A recent NBC/Marist poll found voters favor the GOP to handle the economy by an unprecedented 18 percentage points over Democrats.

A trend is emerging around how voters perceive the Democratic Party's ability to handle the economy - it's bad, and it's gotten worse over the course of the pandemic.

Inflation spiked in October at a rate not seen since 1990, according to the latest Consumer Price Index figures.

With Republicans taking the governor's seat and sweeping statewide races in Virginia Tuesday night - despite the traditional swing state showing signs of becoming more reliable for Democrats in recent years - public opinion on the economy is an underlooked but highly consequential factor heading into the 2022 and 2024 elections.

As Insider's Grace Panetta and John Dorman reported, Virginia voters listed the economy as a top*two issue in the runup to the election, and areas where President Joe Biden won handily in 2020 just swung away from his party in the governor's race.

Biden's approval ratings have been consistently declining to historic lows for any president at this point in his first term. Those numbers have been correlated with public opinion on his pandemic response and handling of the economy.

A recent NBC/Marist poll had troubling results for Biden, but an overlooked subsection of the poll sheds light on the broader issues Democrats are facing on the economy.

The NBC/Marist survey found voters favor Republicans to handle the economy by an 18-percentage-point margin, one of the highest in any subset of questions about the two major parties on broad policy arenas and an unprecedented figure for this specific question on the economy.

That record goes back to the start of the survey in October 1991.

Although Democratic lawmakers cannot do as much to control inflation compared to other areas that fall more under the purview of Congress and the executive branch, the economic fundamentals have not been working in their favor as the pandemic has lingered on.

For one, Americans have endured decade-high inflation for most of 2021. Prices surged during reopening as Americans flush with stimulus and pent-up demand got back to spending. Republicans quickly slammed Democrats over rising prices and argued Biden's spending ambitions would only drive inflation higher.

The White House and the Federal Reserve repeatedly countered concerns of runaway price growth, adding that inflation would cool as the economy normalized. That hasn't happened yet, and new problems are keeping inflation at elevated levels.

Strained supply chains, port backlogs, and shipping delays have kept businesses from restocking their shelves. At the same time, Americans' spending stayed near record-high levels. With just as much cash chasing a dwindling supply of goods, businesses kept raising prices at an extraordinary pace.

Everyday Americans are feeling the heat. Consumer sentiment fell slightly to 71.7 in October, according to the University of Michigan's Surveys of Consumers. That's close to the lowest level since the Great Recession. Americans' hopes for the recovery also dwindled.

The decline was mostly fueled by soaring inflation and "falling confidence in government economic policies, Richard Curtin, chief economist at the Surveys of Consumers, said. The Biden administration still expects price growth to ease in 2022.

But as Americans prepare for the holiday season, they're staring down high prices and putting Democrats in their crosshairs.