„It’s the economy, stupid!“
This phrase, famously coined by political strategist James Carville during Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign in 1992, still holds a lot of truth more than 30 years later. In fact, it sums up pretty well what may have cost Kamala Harris the election. According to exit polls, frustration with the state of the economy, even more so than immigration, was the main driver behind Donald Trump’s sweeping return to power.
According to NEP exit polls published by NBC News, 32 percent of the interviewed voters across 10 key states picked the economy as the one issue that mattered most to them in deciding who to vote for. Of these people, 80 percent voted for Donald Trump, giving him an even higher lead on the issue than Harris achieved among voters focused on abortion, of which 74 percent voted for the Democratic candidate.
During her brief campaign, Harris apparently failed to distance herself from the economic record of the Biden administration, which had left many people feeling worse off than they did four years ago. And while one could argue that Biden steered the economy through the inflation crisis with as little damage as possible given that it was driven in part by factors outside of his control, e.g. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or global supply chain disruptions, that’s not how many people felt and the Harris campaign failed to address those largely negative feelings.
46 percent of voters said their family was worse off now compared to four years ago, which is an even higher share than in 2008, in the midst of the financial crisis. 81 percent of these people voted for Trump, suggesting that Harris was perceived as the “more of the same” candidate while Trump promised change. Despite the economy doing reasonably well on paper – steady GDP growth, unemployment low, stock prices high – Americans are very downbeat after three years of high inflation. 68 percent of voters described the state of the economy as not so good or poor, while only 31 percent said it was good or excellent.
