Opinion | Trump is losing his edge with voters on the economy - The Washington Post
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
It seems that good economic news is finally sinking in for voters.
Vy Catherine Rampell
October 8, 2024 at 7:30 a.m. EDT
How good is the U.S. economy these days? So good that Republicans are pretending the numbers are fake.
GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has long held a lead over his Democratic rival on economic issues, but lately the gap has narrowed. In the spring, when President Joe Biden was still on the ticket, Trump held a roughly 12-point edge on the economy. Today, Trump remains ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris, but she's cut that margin in half.
Some recent surveys have even found the candidates in a dead heat on economic issues. A recent Cook Political Report poll of swing state voters, for instance, found Trump's advantage on "inflation and the cost of living" had evaporated completely.
This is remarkable. For most of the past decade, voters overwhelmingly trusted Republicans more on economic issues. They've been bummed about the economy during the Biden-Harris administration, often citing the economy or inflation as their top issue.
So how has Harris narrowed the gap?
Trump probably hasn't helped his case by pitching ever-higher global tariffs, which would probably be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Independent economic analyses have also found that the rest of his agenda (mass deportations, politicizing the Federal Reserve, etc.) would probably worsen inflation and depress growth. The downstream consequences of these policies are not always intuitive, however, so they might not have influenced voters' perceptions of Trump's economic agenda all that much.
Trump's struggles to remember his pitch might have played a role, too. At a recent Michigan event, for instance, a voter asked how he'd keep auto manufacturing jobs in the state. He responded with a rant about a nonexistent "Michigan man of the year" award he apparently hallucinated receiving.
Meanwhile, Harris has managed a "pivot" on the economy. Her policy approach has been directionally similar to Biden's (she has proposed higher taxes for the wealthy, manufacturing subsidies, a more generous child tax credit, punishing greedy corporations, and so on). Her tone or word choices so far appear more successful than Biden's, though. As Ben Mathis-Lilley recently wrote in Slate, Harris has subtly shifted public discourse away from past "inflation" and toward a more forward-looking discussion of the "cost of living."
But the biggest reason for Trump's shrinking lead on the economy may have little to do with either candidate: The U.S. economy is just doing spectacularly well.
Price growth has slowed significantly. We're now within spitting distance of the Federal Reserve's 2-percent target inflation rate. Thanks to that progress, the Fed began cutting interest rates last month, which is welcome news for borrowers.
Despite recession fears that were widespread two years ago, we also appear to be on track for a so-called soft landing.
That is, output is growing, and we're still adding tons of jobs. Friday's forecast-busting employment report found that U.S. employers added 254,000 jobs on net in September. Despite GOP claims that undocumented immigrants are taking all the jobs, the employment rate for prime-working-age, native-born Americans reached a record high. We have more jobs and more output today than had been predicted even in pre-pandemic forecasts.
Of course, most of these things were true a few months ago, when Biden was still on the ticket. But this good economic news might have needed time to sink in with the electorate. Voters are finally acclimating to the price growth of 2022-2023. As prices stabilize, consumers might no longer experience sticker shock every time they visit the grocery store.
It also helps that hourly wage growth has been outpacing inflation for more than a year now.
Assessments of the economy — as measured by consumer expectations, for example — have been trending upward in recent months. Consumers' economic views are still gloomier than other standard economic metrics would suggest (at least based on historical patterns), but they have been improving nonetheless.
The presidential administration doesn't control economic conditions, of course. But voters don't always realize that. Recent economic improvements, and cooling resentment over inflation, have therefore helped Harris — so much so that 2024 could turn out a bit like 2012. Back then, economic pessimism weighed on incumbent President Barack Obama, but as the election approached, public assessments of the economy caught up with economic progress. Obama won reelection easily.
Republican politicians appear shaken by this precedent. In response to last week's ebullient jobs report, House Republicans complained that the "Unemployment rate remains high at 4.1%." In reality, 4.1 percent unemployment is extremely low by historical standards.
Meanwhile Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) alleged without evidence that the report was full of "fake numbers."
While it's certainly true that government statistics are subject to error, any implication that the independent Bureau of Labor Statistics somehow cooked the books is laughably false. Not coincidentally, conservatives made similar (and false) claims in 2012, when encouraging employment data arrived shortly before the election.
Unfortunately for conservatives, voters didn't care that the good news was inconvenient for the GOP then, either.
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