Each Tuesday here at Opinion Today, from now through Election Day, contributing Opinion writer Kristen Soltis Anderson will assess the latest polls to shed light on how voters see the 2024 campaign, the stakes for the country and the issues that matter most to them. One thing has been true about the presidential election polling for many months now, regardless of who was up or down in the horse race: Donald Trump has been favored on the issue of the economy, and the economy has ranked as voters' most important issue. Whatever other obstacles Trump and his campaign have faced, more voters have tended to trust him with the economy than the Biden-Harris ticket. According to at least one poll, though, voters' attitudes may have changed. In a new survey conducted for The Financial Times, by a single point, Vice President Kamala Harris edges out Trump on the question of who voters trust more to handle the economy. This result is a perfect example of when the trend line, not the data point itself, tells the most interesting story. In isolation, voters being essentially evenly split on anything isn't particularly surprising. The race for the White House is, at this point, very likely to be a close one, and seeing voters divide into their respective camps is what you'd expect. But Harris's slight edge on the economy in that Financial Times poll exists in the context of the numbers that came before it. To see the shift from Trump winning on the top issue to it being a jump ball will be an eye-opening finding if it is replicated in other polls. To be clear, this isn't necessarily because voters have started feeling a whole lot better about the state of things economically. The FT poll shows a fairly consistent majority of Americans reporting that when it comes to their own financial situation, they're "surviving" rather than "thriving." Almost three-quarters of respondents say they have a negative view of the overall condition of the economy, and half say they are worse off than they were before President Biden took office. Rather, the poll suggests that Trump and Republicans don't seem to have succeeded yet in connecting Harris to Biden's economic policies. If they're able to do so, it will be a significant challenge for Harris; more than six in 10 voters in the same poll say that if she's elected, Harris should either "make major changes" or "take a completely different approach" from Biden. In an interview that aired on Sunday, Trump's running mate, JD Vance, called Harris a "chameleon." On the campaign trail on Saturday, Harris endorsed the view that there ought to be no federal tax on tips, something Trump had already proposed. It reminded me just a bit of the 2012 election, when one of Mitt Romney's top campaign aides said that after the primary election, Romney would be able to reset his policy positions, "almost like an Etch A Sketch." Back then, that comment drew sharp criticism. But in this election, at least for the moment, Harris has been able to shake things up and shake off some of the economy-driven malaise that had followed Biden's campaign. Odds and Ends"Weird" might not work: Gov. Tim Walz was hailed as a political messaging genius for dubbing the Trump-Vance ticket "weird." Some scholars and analysts seem to disagree; two new analyses evaluating the most potent messages that could benefit Harris find that the "weird" line of attack isn't nearly as helpful as defining Harris in a positive light. As the political scientists David Broockman and Josh Kalla write: Voters have been hearing about Donald Trump for almost 10 years now. If they're willing to vote for him based on that near-decade of experience, a few ads or a new quip are unlikely to change their minds about him. In our survey, we found that every attempt at attacking Trump — from overturning Roe to his threat to democracy and calling him "weird" — didn't persuade voters to support Harris. … Our survey finds exactly this: Only messages praising Harris's achievements and describing her vision for America win her votes. Messages attacking Trump don't. Battle in the states: The latest Times/Siena polls of three key battleground states suggest a race tilting in favor of Harris as well. Here, too, the trend lines seem clear, with various polls conducted not long after Biden's withdrawal showing a neck-and-neck race that in the subsequent weeks has slowly morphed into a Harris lead. In those polls, on the issue of the economy, Trump has a six-point margin over Harris among likely voters. Here's what we're focusing on today:
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2024/08/13
Opinion Today: Kamala Harris is erasing Donald Trump’s lead on the economy
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