Inflation is unpopular with voters and is widely believed to harm the popularity of incumbents. High inflation following the Covid-19 pandemic has been identified as a key reason for poor incumbent performance at the polls around the world, including the defeat of the Harris-Walz ticket in the 2024 U.S. Presidential election.

Such conjectures align with existing research showing that voters' inflation perceptions are associated with poor evaluations of incumbent parties. Yet observational studies cannot eliminate the possibility that the causal relationship runs the other way, where opposition to incumbent governments causes individuals to report higher price increases.

To help overcome this inferential challenge, this study draws on an experiment embedded in a large, nationally representative, survey fielded just days before the 2024 U.S. Presidential election. We find that priming Americans to think about inflation reduces approval of the Biden-Harris administration and lowers confidence in the Democrats' ability to manage the economy. Moreover, we find this effect is most pronounced among Independents and Democrats, precisely the voters Harris-Walz needed to win the election, suggesting that inflation likely contributed to the Democrats' defeat.