JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have been courting swing voters in Pennsylvania, a self-proclaimed must-win state for both campaigns that polls show is evenly split between the candidates. One big political challenge for Harris is inflation. A Pew Research Center poll out last month found that 8 in 10 registered voters said the economy is their top issue in the election. Robert Benincasa from NPR's investigations unit visited the city of Pittsburgh to talk with voters about rising grocery prices and their choices in the election.
ROBERT BENINCASA, BYLINE: There's nothing like a trip to the grocery store to remind you of inflation.
DIANNE SHENK: We're charging $4 for the white eggs, which are grocery store eggs. We've been charging $6.25 a dozen for the brown farm eggs from our farmer.
BENINCASA: Dianne Shenk owns Dylamato's Market, a small, successful grocery store in Pittsburgh's Hazelwood neighborhood, a place where big supermarkets aren't within walking distance. In Pittsburgh, the price of eggs is up nearly 40% in the last year. That's among the highest across the nation's 50 top metro areas.
NPR reached out to Datasembly Incorporated, a market intelligence company that tracks billions of grocery item prices every week. They gave us a year's worth of grocery price data for places all over the country, including Pittsburgh. Prices for fish and poultry here have dropped, even as beef and pork are up by four to 5%. And the impact on Steelers fans' tailgate parties has been minimal. The price of beer is up only 2%. Nationally, grocery prices have been cooling. They're up a bit over 1% in the last year, but that's after an increase of more than a quarter since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. So your $100 grocery bill in early 2020 is now about $126.
Yodora Diamond, a former Hazelwood resident who returned to shop at Shenk's store, chatted with me as Shenk's husband rang up her order of fresh produce and sandwiches. She believes her grocery bill will be lower if former President Trump is elected because she thinks he'll be better for fuel prices and farmers.
YODORA DIAMOND: Even though he believes in the trickle-down effect, I just know how it was when he was in office. Financially, I was much better.
BENINCASA: That sentiment is shared broadly by many Americans, according to polls. Just down the street, Bruce and Emily Thornton own the 1:11 Juice Bar, which offers cold-pressed fruits and vegetables. They've seen the cost of their ingredients increase. Bruce says he disagrees with some Biden administration policies and will reluctantly vote for Kamala Harris.
BRUCE THORNTON: The reason why she's getting my vote is because I think it'll be a little bit - maybe a little better - I don't know - for us than the other - than the alternative. Well, she says she's willing to tax the upper class, and I believe that that is necessary. There needs to be, you know, a real tax on people who are making all this money, and then everyone else is kind of hurting.
BENINCASA: The trouble with inflation numbers is that they aren't the only thing that can drive political attitudes. There's also the perception of inflation. A few years ago, Harvard Business School economist Alberto Cavallo scanned the receipts of shoppers outside grocery stores in Argentina, which was reeling from high inflation. He compared their beliefs about inflation to the real inflation rates affecting what they bought.
ALBERTO CAVALLO: People do seem to put a lot of emphasis on the prices of things that they can connect to - so things that are already in their basket, you know? They seem to have these memories about the price increases, and that's what essentially drives their expectations of inflation.
BENINCASA: The problem?
CAVALLO: Their memories are really bad.
BENINCASA: Cavallo found that shoppers often overestimated increases in the prices of their products and underestimated past prices.
SHENK: We had a whole bunch of weird things...
BENINCASA: Back in Pittsburgh's Dylamato's market, Shenk hears about grocery prices from her customers every day. But she says they've been showing some restraint when it comes to politics.
SHENK: We don't have people going off about stuff. They'd like to, but they kind of catch themselves, and they're like, oh, well, you know, we're not going to talk politics.
BENINCASA: At least not at the grocery store.
Robert Benincasa, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF TERRACE MARTIN SONG, "THIS MORNING") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
