Voters Blame Corporate Price Gouging for Inflation, Strongly Support Policies Tackling Issue Head-On

Today, Groundwork Collaborative released a new poll from Data for Progress gauging the public's perceptions on recent inflation. The results, as mentioned in Yahoo Finance, showed that a majority of voters blame large corporations for price increases and strongly support policies that address monopoly behavior and corporate profiteering head-on.

"Big corporations aren't shy in telling their investors how they're taking advantage of the pandemic to jack up prices and pad their own profits - and the public is noticing," said Groundwork's Executive Director Lindsay Owens. "Policymakers should listen to voters by cracking down on corporations raising prices unfairly, addressing corporate consolidation and monopoly power, and increasing taxes on corporations."

Top points from the new poll (see the full polling deck here):

• 63% believe that "large corporations are taking advantage of the pandemic to raise prices unfairly on consumers and increase profits" vs. 29% who believe "large corporations have no choice but to raise prices in response to rising costs."
  
• 80% support the federal government "Crack[ing] down on large corporations that raise prices unfairly, and promot[ing competition between businesses to lower prices for consumers and small businesses." This includes 79% of independents and 74% of Republicans.

Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,549 likely voters nationally between Feb. 18 and 22 using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The margin of error is +-3 percentage points.