Consumer sentiment about the state of the economy could be pivotal in shaping the 2024 presidential election.

President Biden is still grappling with how to address one of his biggest weaknesses: inflation, which has recently cooled but soared in his first years in office. Former President Donald J. Trump’s frequent economic boasts are undermined by the mass job losses and supply chain disruptions wrought by the pandemic.

Here’s a fact check of some of their more recent claims about the economy.

Both candidates misrepresented inflation.

What Was Said

“They had inflation of — the real number, if you really get into the real number, it’s probably 40 percent or 50 percent when you add things up, when you don’t just put in the numbers that they want to hear.”
— Mr. Trump at a campaign event in Detroit in June

“I think it could be as high as 50 percent if you add everything in, when you start adding energy prices in, when you start adding interest rates.”
— Mr. Trump in a June interview on Fox News

This is misleading. Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, cited a 41 percent increase in energy prices since January 2021, and prices for specific energy costs like gasoline rising more than 50 percent during that time.

But the most widely used measure for overall inflation, the Consumer Price Index, has increased by about 20 percent since January 2021, less than half of Mr. Trump’s estimate. Year-over-year inflation peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022.

In comparison, under Mr. Trump, the index cumulatively rose by about 7.4 percent from January 2017 to January 2021, and year-to-year inflation peaked at 2.9 percent in July 2018.

The index does include energy prices, but Mr. Trump is right that it has not included interest rates since the 1980s for a variety of reasons. In a 1982 paper explaining why the C.P.I. would take into account rental costs rather than mortgage rates, economists from the Bureau of Labor Statistics wrote that mortgages were in part investments for the future, while the inflation index should focus only on current consumption.