Can Harris Convince Voters She's Better Than Trump on This Top Issue?
The US economy, contrary to conventional wisdom, is the 'envy of the world' – so why don't Americans agree?
Kansas City Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. has the highest batting average, .331, in Major League Baseball. That represents one hit every three times he comes to the plate.
But it also means Witt makes an out two out of every three times. Put that way, even someone more successful than all the other hitters doesn’t sound all that successful.
That’s a bit like our campaign 2024 discussion of the economy.
As has been the case for decades, millions of Americans live in poverty. Millions struggle to pay bills for housing, gas, and groceries. The richest 10% hold 67% of all household wealth, according to Federal Reserve data, while the bottom 50% hold just 2.5%.
Media reports about the economy reflect polls showing a sour mood. Fewer than one in three people in the US consider the economy good or excellent; about six in 10 disapprove of President Joe Biden’s economic stewardship.
Yet the US economy has outperformed other countries so much since the pandemic that it’s the “Envy of the World,” as a Wall Street Journal headline declared earlier this year. Inflation has fallen. Wages have risen. Unemployment remains near 50-year lows with uninterrupted output growth – the “soft landing” economists have hoped for.
So by the standards of recent history and the US’ global peers, our economy has thrived. You might even say it’s leading the league.
“The US is the global engine of growth,” concludes Moody’s economist Mark Zandi. “The typical American is doing well, and has done incredibly well.”
Election-Year Conundrum
In the close race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the disconnect between economic conditions and political opinion represents an election-year conundrum. If the top issue for voters really is “the economy, stupid,” in James Carville’s famous 1992 dictum, the incumbent vice president ought to hold a stronger hand than she does. So, why doesn’t she?
One reason: In our entrenched 21st-century polarization, it’s the partisanship, stupid, not the economy. Instead of choosing Republican or Democratic candidates based on their evaluations of the economy, most Americans evaluate the economy based on the party they’ve already chosen. When the White House switches from one side to the other, economic assessments move in tandem. (Republicans switch the most.)
“Ninety percent of people look at issues through a partisan lens,” says Matthew Dowd, the top strategist for President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. For the remaining 10%, he adds, the economy is one among several influences on whether and how they vote.
A second reason: An increasing number of voters doubt that presidents affect the economy much. That makes it less relevant to voting decisions even if it remains Americans’ top concern.
A third: The dispiriting COVID pandemic, with its shutdowns, layoffs, large relief checks, and more than 1 million deaths, has scrambled economic attitudes. Four years after it hit, conditions that once evoked positive assessments no longer do.
“The pandemic has broken a closely-followed survey of sentiment,” The Economist reported last year about the University of Michigan’s renowned consumer sentiment index. “Americans’ opinions about the state of the economy have diverged from reality.”
To be sure, the price spikes of 2021-22 were plenty real, and painful for Americans accustomed to three decades of sub-4% inflation. The same goes for the interest rate increases the Fed imposed to tame inflation, raising the cost of borrowing for houses and cars. (The Fed, confident that inflation has fallen back to acceptable sub-3% levels, stands poised to begin cutting rates this week.)
The big Biden-Harris administration COVID relief stimulus somewhat exacerbated the inflation that afflicted countries worldwide. But most of it stemmed from post-pandemic supply-chain bottlenecks, aggravated by the effects of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The Biden-Harris stimulus also bolstered hiring, growth, and the average American’s bank balance.
The Reality
Federal Reserve data shows that real (that is, adjusted for inflation) median household net worth jumped 37% between 2019 and 2022 – a record increase. The net worth of all US households increased more than 7.4% from 2023 to 2024 and now stands at an all-time high.
Real median household income rose 4% between 2022 and 2023. Real wages rose for all income groups between 2019 and 2023. They rose fastest for the lowest-income workers, narrowing income inequality. No wonder consumer spending has remained strong, notwithstanding what consumers tell pollsters.
Plenty of voices tell Americans to consider the economy lousy. Trump and Republican allies want to discredit partisan foes; left-wing Democrats seek more ideologically-aggressive policies. The media knows bad news sells.
But the effect of politics on economic attitudes goes both ways. Since replacing Biden as the Democratic candidate, Harris has turned his three percentage point deficit against Trump into a three-point lead in the New York Times national polling average. One survey of economic attitudes shows a similar shift in the wake of Harris’ successful Democratic convention and debate performance.
In July, the Financial Times-University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business poll showed that voters gave Trump a six-point advantage over Biden on the handling of the economy. This week, it showed that voters trust Harris more than Trump by two points. That’s not because a good Biden-Harris economic record has gotten any better.
Check out some of Zeteo’s other 2024 election coverage…
Let’s hope the people open their eyes. Maybe the media needs a “kick in the pants “ as my grandfather used to say.