The surges seemed unsparing. Eggs and fruit; gas and cars; energy bills, rent and insurance premiums.

Spikes in the prices of consumer goods and monthly household costs have dominated pocketbook concerns across the country in the past four years as major incidents like the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war with Ukraine disrupted global supply chains and set off a long list of downstream effects.

And as voters head to the polls to pick two very different economic agendas, those apprehensions haven’t abated — even if economists argue many of the underlying issues have.

“Everything costs so much more, I think three times more than it did before,” said Minnie Gross, a retired accountant from Randallstown who voted early last week.

Voters like Gross consistently rank economic problems as a top issue as they decide how to vote this year.

Polls show that’s the case both nationally and in Maryland, where two of the most recent statewide surveys — from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and The Washington Post/University of Maryland — found the economy was the biggest problem.

Two-thirds of Marylanders considered economic conditions in the state as “poor” or “fair,” according to the UMBC poll. Nine of every 10 voters said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned with prices the most when they were presented with a list of economic indicators.

Second on the list was housing cost and availability, which eight in 10 voters said was a concern.

That rings true for voters like Rolieta Haywood, a 32-year-old mother of five from Arbutus who delivers food through DoorDash and Instacart. She said politicians at all levels should have better priorities when it comes to directing money to lower-income families, particularly for “more and better housing.”

She gives credit to former President Donald Trump for financial benefits like the pandemic-era stimulus checks that were disbursed both in 2020 and when Biden was in office in 2021, though she ultimately voted for Vice President Kamala Harris because she believes Trump causes too much division. She said she’s sought Section 8 housing assistance in the past and was pleased to hear Harris has focused on housing problems, though she wasn’t familiar with the details of the Democratic nominee’s plans.

“We should have leaders that are concerned with the population as a whole, not just about themselves … but who actually care and come to different communities and see what communities need,” Haywood said.

Harris and Trump have both focused on voters’ economic worries and vowed to bring down prices.

The former Republican president claims his plan for a string of international tariffs will lower costs. Harris has dubbed that idea a “Trump sales tax” and said she would focus on price gouging and improving the housing crisis by incentivizing building and giving money to first-time buyers.

Economists say it will be extremely difficult for either candidate to make a serious dent in deep structural problems like housing. And while Trump’s plan is not exactly a “sales tax” as Harris describes it, it will have the effect of raising costs on consumers as companies and other countries push back in response.

“The Trump campaign obviously is going to say this is tax that will go on foreigners but the importers will largely pass the prices to the consumer. They’re not going to pay those themselves,” said Gabriel Mathy, an associate professor of economics and fellow at American University’s Institute for Macroeconomic Policy and Analysis.

While voters’ concerns about the economy are valid, economists also say there’s an overall disconnect between how people see the economy versus the factors that typically indicate economic strength.

Robert Lynch, a professor of economics at Washington College, said it’s a phenomenon in which people are experiencing the negative impacts of modern-day record inflation more than the coinciding positive economic trends.

He said, for example, that wages are up 26% while inflation has made prices rise about 21%. Growth in both the number of jobs and the overall size of the economy also is higher now, at the end of President Joe Biden’s administration, than it was at the peak of Trump’s administration, before the onset of the pandemic, Lynch said.

But there’s also a record gap between people who say they’re personally faring well and who also say the economy is performing badly, he said.

“What we know is that you can influence people’s perception of reality by how you frame reality,” Lynch said, referring to Trump’s repeated claims that there was never a stronger economy than the one he built. “That kind of manipulation actually works.”

Mathy said even though the rate of inflation has lowered — from a 9.1% year-over-year increase in June 2022 to 2.4% in September — “it’s still a big sticker shock” for middle-class and lower-class voters not seeing prices actually come down.

Not only have prices of many goods not come down, they’re also still ticking up in some ways. The U.S. Department of Labor’s report on the consumer price index shows the cost of groceries rising 1.3% in September when compared to the previous year. Meat, poultry, fish and eggs rose 3.9%, while fruits and vegetables rose 0.7%, and cereals and bakery products rose 0.1%.

Energy prices, however, have declined. Gasoline — which averaged $3.09 in Maryland on Thursday, according to AAA — was down nationally 15.3% year-over-year in September.

Meanwhile, costs associated with medical care increased at a higher rate, 3.3%, than other areas.

Khyri Young, a 25-year-old Randallstown resident who’s in the Army, said health care affordability and accessibility for his grandparents were among his most important issues as he went to early voting.

He ultimately voted for Harris but split his ticket down-ballot for Republican U.S. Senate nominee Larry Hogan and congressional Republican candidate Kim Klacik, who made an impression on him when he met her in the parking lot of the early voting center before he went in.

Young said he’s seen what Harris has said about lowering the costs of prescription drugs like insulin and not cutting social safety nets like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

“It should be more affordable,” Young said of insulin, the cost of which is now limited nationally for Medicaid patients but not beyond that. “Apparently it’s not that expensive to make insulin, but why does it cost people so much to get it?”

Still, economists and political scientists say the cost of everyday goods tends to focus in voters’ minds more than other rising costs, like health care premiums. Part of the reason for the recent elevated concern is because of the sheer amount of increases compared to the last several decades.

“The inflation issue is really big, and that’s new,” Mathy said. “We hadn’t really had a serious inflation issue since the ‘80s and it was really much worse in the ‘70s, so you had a whole generation or two that hadn’t really seen a significant inflation problem.”

Candidates like Hogan, running against Democratic Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, have grasped onto the issue. In billboards and ads, the Republican has railed against the higher costs of everyday goods.

Christopher Summers, founder and CEO of the conservative Maryland Public Policy Institute think tank, said he thinks that message resonates with voters, especially with Hogan’s “big mantra and theme” as governor being about lowering taxes and fees.

“The economy, it’s always the top priority for people,” Summers said. “We’re still sort of in this post-COVID-era economy. But also when you look at grocery prices, gas prices, these things are still hurting consumers.”

Summers said those feelings are unlikely to affect the actual outcome of Hogan’s race, where he said polls show that voters are more concerned about the control of the narrowly divided U.S. Senate, or the presidential race, where Maryland is expected to reliably back Harris.

Partisanship also affects voters’ perception of the economy, so Democrats who vastly outnumber Republicans in Maryland are more likely to view it favorably, said Todd Eberly, a political science professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

For voters like Gross, the Randallstown retiree who voted for Harris and Alsobrooks but voted previously for Hogan as governor, it can cut both ways.

She said she likes Harris’ policies, like giving $25,000 to first-time homebuyers. But she knows those benefits won’t be born out of thin air.

“Some people can’t even dream of owning anything because of their income and now that the food prices are up and everything else, so that’s something I definitely think is a plus,” Gross said of the housing plan.

Have a news tip or questions about this story? Contact editor Candy Woodall at cwoodall@baltsun.com