'Really significant': GOP pollster says Trump 'failed' to hold edge on #1 election issue

25 September 2024

If former President Donald Trump hopes to win a second term in the White House this November, it will likely come down to voters' perception that he's better for the economy. But new polls show that he's rapidly losing ground to Vice President Kamala Harris on the issue.

According a recent article by the Washington Post's Abha Bhattarai, Trump previously enjoyed large advantages over President Joe Biden on who was more adept at managing the U.S. economy. When voters were asked which candidate they trusted on economic issues, Trump had as much as a 15-point edge over Biden in some polls. But now that Harris is at the top of the ticket, Trump is finding himself in a much different position.

Bhattarai noted that in the most recent Fox News poll, 51% of respondents said Trump was better for the economy, while 46% said the same of Harris. Other polls showed similar results: A Reuters/Ipsos survey, for example, showed that Trump had a seven-point edge over Harris on the economy. 91% of respondents in that poll said the economy was one of their top issues of concern in the 2024 election.

While the ex-president is still ahead of his Democratic opponent in that regard, the fact that Harris is polling significantly ahead of where Biden was is worrisome to one veteran Republican pollster. Frank Luntz told the Post that the latest polls on the economy are an ominous sign for the ex-president's hopes of reelection.

“Voters are beginning to give to give [Harris] the benefit of the doubt — and that’s really significant,” said Frank Luntz, a longtime GOP pollster. “Affordability is a top issue for voters, but Trump has failed to hold Harris to account or to tie her to Biden’s inflation failures.”

According to the Post, Harris' growing trust among voters on the economy differs from Biden in that while Biden was running on defending his managing of the economy, Harris has come off as more sympathetic to voters' concerns about high prices on consumer goods like groceries and gas. The paper also noted that consumer confidence – the metric of how Americans are feeling about their own economic health — is relatively high. Meanwhile, inflation has cooled off to 2021 levels and the Federal Reserve recently cut interest rates by half a percentage point, which is known in economic parlance as a "soft landing."

However, Harris' edge isn't limited to being a more effective communicator than Biden on the economy. Luntz opined that another advantage Harris has in the final stretch of the 2024 campaign cycle is that her opponent is failing to stay on message.

“Trump had an unprecedented opportunity to ask the American people, ‘Can you really afford four more years of Joe Biden?’” Luntz said. “And instead he’s focusing on people eating pets.”

Despite his favoring of Republican candidates and policies, Luntz has acknowledged recently that Harris' campaign is on a roll and rapidly turning voters off from the GOP ticket. In an August interview on CNBC, Luntz predicted that the vice president may very well not only keep the White House in Democratic hands this November, but that she could help her party gain and build on majorities in both the House and Senate.

"She’s bringing out people who are not interested in voting for either Trump or Biden, so the entire electoral pool has changed and if it continues in this direction you have to start to consider Democrats winning the Senate and Democrats winning the House," Luntz told Squawk Box last month.

Click here to read the Post's report in full (subscription required).

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