Up First from NPR - Retail Sales Drop, U.S. Warships in Distress, Accurately Polling the Electorate

Episode Date: August 15, 2026

Paychecks aren't keeping pace with rising prices, and households are feeling the squeeze. Sailors on the ships deployed to the Middle East are straining without enough clean water and fresh food. In the thick of primary season for the midterms, how reliable is polling? Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

New economic numbers show Americans pulling back on spending. Sales were down at gas stations, grocery stores, and car dealerships in July. Paychecks for American workers keep losing ground to inflation. I'm Mater Praalta. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, and this is up first from NPR News. The price of gas is high. People's wages aren't keeping up. Employers also shed tens of thousands of jobs in July, squeezing people even more. Sailors aboard some U.S. warships are sending distress signals as the war in Iran drags on.

The water is contaminated, the equipment is breaking down, and they need fresh food. And finally, how accurate has polling been so far this election cycle? Stay with us. We have the news you need to start your weekend. Government number crunchers gave us a flurry of economic data this week. Put together, it helps to color in a picture of the ways that. that Americans are making, saving, borrowing, and spending money. NPR Scott Horsley and Alina Selyuk join us now. Hey there.

Hello, hello. Good morning. So Alina, let's start with you. What's happening with prices these days? Well, they're still going up, but not as fast as they had before. In fact, inflation cooled for the second month in a row in July, which is the latest data that we got this week. So from June to July, consumer prices rose just one-tenth of a percent.

And that's a reprieve from the sharp price increases we saw in late spring after the U.S. war with Iran began. The cost of groceries actually fell slightly from June to July. The one big reason was big discounts on lettuce, as supermarkets are, you know, trying to get people to buy leafy greens after the cyclospora cases. Beef prices are still rising, but chicken and eggs are costing less. And then there's the big question of gas prices. The eternal question of gas prices. Yes. Gasoline prices. fell a bit in July, which they also did in June, but they are still up quite a bit from a year ago.

Federal data showed gas prices in July were up nearly 25 percent from last year. And the challenge for a lot of families has to do with a mismatch between what's happening with prices and what's happening with their paychecks. Even though inflation has cooled off in the last couple of months, wage gains have slowed down even more. You know, the job market's kind of stuck in neutral. People aren't switching jobs very often. And so employers are not having to pay. as much to attract workers as they did a year or two ago. Over the last 12 months, average wages have gone up just 3.2%. So even with somewhat tamer inflation, the typical paycheck is buying less today than it was a year ago. And that's a turnaround. For most of the last three years,

wages were rising faster than prices. So people were gaining ground and catching up to the high cost of living. Now that's reversed. And I suppose you would expect spending to go down as a result. expect that, but actually, depending on how you measure, you get different answers. So this week, we got new data on retail sales, which is, you know, spending on cars at stores and restaurants. And for the first time in months, this retail spending did decline, down 0.6% from June to July. But the meaning of it is not so straightforward because this is a comparison month to month. And the biggest drag on that was the fact that Amazon shifted the timing of its big prime day summer sale event. And it shifted to earlier to June, so people did more of their online shopping in June and a lot less in July.

But then it's important to look also at the comparison from a year ago. And looking that way, retail sales were up by 5%, which is a bit of a slowdown, but not a huge one. And people keep buying more things that are not necessities like gardening supplies or sporting goods. Scott, if paychecks aren't keeping pace with prices, how are people covering their expenses? In some cases, they're borrowing. A report from the New York Fed this week shows that credit card debt continued to grow in the spring. That's not unusual. And so far, we're not seeing big signs of distress like a jump in late payments.

But for people who do carry a balance on their credit card, that is a very expensive way to borrow. And actually, I want to mention an interesting thing from this week's report by Bank of America. Researchers there analyzed spending on the bank's debit and credit cards. And what they found is that spending by lower-income shoppers, actually increased in July while spending by higher income folks declined, which is a new thing, right, Scott? Well, yeah, it would be at odds with what we've heard about for a long time, the so-called K-shaped economy, which if you picture a chart, that means upper-income families spending more,

lower-income families tightening their bills. Yeah, and so now some signs are suggesting that maybe the legs of that K-shape are starting to curve into more like a C-shape, like the letter C, where folks toward the top of the income range are maybe starting to spend less while the lower income folks start spending more, you know, curving more toward each other. So far, Bank of America called out restaurants as one spot where spending is growing faster among lower income folks than higher income. And we're going to keep a close eye on these spending patterns in the months to come because, you know, consumer spending is such a big driver of the overall U.S. economy. If people were to really

tighten their belts, it could put a brakes on economic growth. All right. So any other big takeaways from this week in economic data? Well, one takeaway is that families are not the only ones relying heavily on borrowed money. Congressional forecasters said this week they expect the federal government will run a deficit of more than $2 trillion this year. That's pushing the government's overall debt close to the $40 trillion mark. And just the interest on all that debt is now the government's second biggest expense trailing only Social Security. And the investors who lend money to the government by buying bonds, they are demanding higher interest rates now,

some of the highest rates in decades. And that in turn affects the interest rate that private borrowers have to pay for things like home mortgages. Mortgage rates have climbed to about 6.7%. And we know that's been a real drag on the housing market. So everyone living beyond their means. That's NPR Scott Horsley and Alina Salyuk.

Thank you both. Thank you. You're welcome. The USS George Washington is heading toward the Middle East. Another aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is currently in the region, part of the blockade of Iran. It has been deployed for almost nine months now. Secretary of Defense Pete Hagseth says the U.S. can maintain the naval blockade on Iran indefinitely by simply swapping out aircraft carriers. Unusually long deployments are tough on crews and on their families.

And it turns out on the ships themselves. conditions on board have been deteriorating as the months have dragged on. In Paris, Tom Bowman covers the Pentagon and he joins us now. Hey, Tom. Hey, Adir. Tom, what have you been hearing about what's been going on with the USS Lincoln? Well, there's a lot of concern, Ader over conditions. It's been out to sea for more than 250 days with 5,000 sailors on board.

And with logistics hubs under the threat in the Gulf because of the war, critical supplies are hampered reaching sailors, everything from, you know, fresh food to mail to care packages. And, you know, this isn't the first time. NPR first broke the story on sanitation problems on the USS Ford, another carrier. Get this, a number of toilets were out of commission. Not what you want to hear when you're aboard a ship. And MS Now and others have been reporting that sailors have attempted to jump from the carrier, Lincoln, which NPR has not independently confirmed. No, no matter what, both Hags at the Navy officials deny those reports. And here's the other thing. I'm hearing a similar concerns about lack of food, soap, clean water on the USS Boxer,

which is also in the region. So again, a lot of concerns from sailors, from their families, about these conditions. I mean, all of this seems like really basic challenges for the U.S. and the world's most powerful military. And it's in huge contrast with what we've been seeing with the incredibly innovative use of battlefield tech, like the drones that Ukraine uses against Russia. What does this tell you? Well, you know, what the Pentagon is saying is the delays are due to resupply issues. It could be operational demands, supply chain concerns. And then also in a war, fuel and munitions take precedent over, let's say, packages from home or some of these other issues.

They say, you know, there is food aboard. It's not maybe the best food, maybe, you know, energy bars or corn dogs rather than a decent hot meal. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth is that these concerns are misrepresenting. But Navy Secretary Hong Kao had a pretty stormy meeting with families of the Lincoln sailors. There were like 200 people in this room in San Diego. So they're getting an earful, really, from family members now as well as sailors. We're now in the six months of this conflict with Iran. It hasn't involved boots on the ground.

But the changing goals of the war evoke Iraq and the 20 years in Afghanistan, the forever wars, don't they? Well, in some ways, you know, the Iran war is even worse because in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, or even Vietnam, you could walk out of those countries, just leave, and there'd be no economic implications. That's not the case here with Iran. The Strait of Hormuz, Iran still has a great deal of control over that. Before the war, there was 130, 140 ships going through the strait. Now, Ader, it's down to fewer than a dozen. they have to deal with that problem. And, you know, analysts I talk with said, you know, at some point, you're going to have to give a carrot of some kind to Iran for them to reopen the straight of Hormuz.

Now, that could be allowing them to, let's say, charge service fees of some kinds for ships going through. It could be, you know, unfreezing some of their billions of dollars and giving it to Iran, but that has to be dealt with. And one last thing I would like to mention. I've talked to admirals and generals over the past number of weeks, And they say, Tom, we've been studying the Strait of Hormuz for 40 years. If there's a war with Iran, that's the first thing they're going to do, close the straight. But apparently the administration didn't listen to military leaders and others who have been looking at this as a critical point. That's NPR's Tom Bowman. Tom, thank you for your reporting.

You're welcome. We're in the thick of primary season and the midterms are just around the corner. And that means polls, lots of them, who's up, who's down, Just how close is that all-important race? It's the job of pollsters to give us a sense of where we may be heading, but should we necessarily be surprised when a result isn't as forecast? Joining us to discuss the inexact science of polling is G. Elliot Morris. He's the journalist and statistician behind the news website, Strength and Numbers.

Thanks for being here. I'm happy to be here. Thanks, Danielle. Now, one race that got a lot of attention last week involved Francesca Hong. She was the Democratic Socialist running in Wisconsin's Democratic, primary for governor. She had a double-digit lead in polls and then ended up losing. So how did the polls get that race so wrong? Well, the first thing I'll say is that primary polls in general are like pretty bad. On average, going back to 2014, my colleague Mary Radcliffe and I have done the math. A primary poll is off on average by about 13 percentage points. So you should like expect them to be

wrong. In this particular case, the wrongness of the polls seems to come down to two factors. First, there was a lot of late movement in this race. One survey I helped conduct, which measured preferences among the same people in July and in August, found about 10 percentage points of movement in the past couple weeks of the race. So that would have accounted for a late shift in the polls. But another problem is Wisconsin in general. In Wisconsin, and pollsters don't have good data on the breakdown of voters by age, by education, or by race. So they're sort of left guessing what that composition of voters is going to be. And that can drive some big misses.

Right. And that race also had candidates in, candidates out. I'm sure that contributed as well. Yeah, there was a couple dropouts, and those voters aren't just going to disappear. They're going to go to a new candidate. In this case, the moderate Democratic candidate, David Crowley, seems to have basically won, almost all of the votes from these dropout candidates who did drop out in the final week of the race. But we only had one survey in the last week of the race to pick up on that movement.

So that's going to leave the polling average that everyone likes to look at a bit outdated. Now, to zoom way out here, in the media, there's been a lot of coverage of the rise of progressive Democratic candidates. What can you tell me about those candidates' chances today compared with, say, a decade ago? Well, the Democratic Party has definitely moved left. And so you're seeing more progressive or in some cases Democratic socialist candidates winning key races such as these congressional races in New York or in Colorado. But, you know, they actually lose some very key races like this one in Wisconsin. So, you know, it looks like the Democratic Party having moved left is now more likely to nominate these progressive candidates. But they're not a lock on the party yet.

Right. Now, as these midterms approach, we're all going to be bombarded by polls. What advice do you have for listeners about how to think? about polls as the midterms approach? Well, polls, the pollsters say, are only snapshots in time. So a good reminder for you as we have these remaining primaries, you know, some states have primaries of late as late September. So they will keep going for a while. Those polls and those primaries can be off by quite a bit. So you shouldn't be surprised if late movement and a race causes those early polls to air by 10, 15 points. The bigger thing that we care about with polls is what they

tell us about public opinion for the public at large, whether or not the people are getting what they want out of Congress, whether or not their leaders are focusing on the right problems. They have the right priorities. And for the most part, these primary poll misses don't seem to be feeding into any errors that we can see in systematic ways for these more important questions of democracy and democratic accountability. So that is the good news. Now, in recent years, polling has gotten a reputation, not always earned, for getting some big calls wrong. I'm curious, What do you think are the real-world consequences, either for politicians or voters, when the polls aren't as accurate as people expect them to be? Well, I think it's more of a argument for decreasing our expectations for the polls.

The average poll is about three percentage points off, even if you're aggregating a bunch of surveys together. This is what we call non-sampling error. It's just error that can enter the poll from not knowing what share of the electorate has certain demographic characteristics as old or young or black. black or white, et cetera. And pollsters have to guess about those things. Instead of hand-waving away those errors, we should just mentally adjust our expectations, I argue, for the next election. And don't be surprised if the polls are off by one or two percentage points on average. But like I say, that shouldn't change how we use them for the broader purpose of democratic accountability and giving a voice to the people. Just don't expect so much precision around election time.

That's G. Eliot Morris from the news website, Strength and Numbers. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. That's up first for Saturday, August 15th, 2026. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. And I'm Adelaide. Michael Radcliffe produced his podcast along with Ryan Bank and Danny Hensel. Our editor is Diana Douglas. She worked with Andrew Sussman, Rafael Namm, and Martin Patience. In the control room are our director, Elena Tuorick, and our technical director, David Greenberg. Our engineering team includes Simon Laslo Jansen, Zoe Van Goghoun and Ted Nebane. Our senior supervising editor is Shannon Rhodes.

Our executive producer is Evie Stone, and our deputy managing editor is Catherine Laidlaw, an NPR trifecta. Tomorrow on the Sunday story, scientists in Britain have been trying a grand experiment to bring back beavers, once hunted to extinction. The new British beavers are both beloved and hated, and they're making their mark on the country. Who could possibly hate beavers? Thanks for listening and for supporting your local NPR station. And if you need to find yours, go to stations.npr.org. I guess you can hate beavers, right? They can be destructive.