Donald Trump won back the presidency by focusing on voters' top issue: the economy

WASHINGTON — All through the election season, Republican Donald Trump consistently outpolled Democrat Kamala Harris on the issue voters said they cared about most — the economy.

Trump, the one-time Manhattan real estate mogul-turned reality TV persona, broadened his base of support this election by appealing to the pocketbook concerns of Americans fatigued by higher prices and higher interest rates, according to national exit polls.

"Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" Trump asked at rally after rally in the weeks leading up to the election.

The response from a majority of voters, according to exit polls, was "No."

Sixty-seven percent of voters surveyed had a negative opinion of the economy, and 45% said their financial situation was "worse now" than it was four years ago, according to the Edison Research exit poll, which conducts the survey on behalf of a consortium of U.S. media outlets.

Four years ago, Joe Biden was elected president as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to wreak havoc on the global economy — the U.S. unemployment rate was at 6.4% in January 2021 when he was sworn into office, global supply-chain shortages impacted U.S. manufacturing, and some businesses shuttered or scaled back as consumers stayed home.

As Biden prepares to leave office, unemployment is down to 4.1%, and average hourly wages are up 22.3% from the onset of the pandemic in February 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But that data did little to ease voter concerns after inflation soared as high as 9.1% in June 2022. That rate since has dropped 2.4%, but prices remain higher than before the pandemic and interest rate hikes have made it costlier to borrow.

Food is now 26% more expensive than it was before the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a new car will cost 20% more on average.

"What political scientists tend to find is that what people are feeling the end of the first quarter of an election year is what, in fact, they think of when they go to the polls," Hofstra University political science professor Richard Himelfarb told Newsday. "So the fact that inflation has dropped ... isn't really relevant. The damage had been done."

Harris’ competing messages

Harris billed herself as a "middle-class kid" sensitive to the needs of working Americans, but her economic messaging also competed with her pitch that Trump was a threat to democracy, an argument that Democrats in the wake of her loss since have acknowledged did little to compel voters concerned about the post-pandemic economy.

Exit polls showed 32% of voters ranked the economy as the top issue influencing their vote, followed by 14% listing abortion and 11% listing immigration. The state of the democracy ranked first at 34%, but political scientists have said the issue took on different meanings for voters in both parties: For Democrats, it meant viewing Trump as a threat to democracy; to Republicans it meant growing distrust in government institutions.

"The key challenge for the Democrats was they had to make this a referendum on Donald Trump and not a referendum on the economy. The problem with that strategic imperative is that it ignores the economy, which was the overwhelming issue for voters," said former Long Island congressman Steve Israel, a Huntington Democrat who now serves as director of Cornell University’s Institute of Politics and Global Affairs.

Israel, who advised Biden’s 2020 campaign and served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for four years, said that while Harris and Democrats tried to "litigate a menu of important issues, including abortion and democracy," voters continued to signal that their economic woes were the top issue. 

"When citizens feel that their economic security is in danger, they tend to be more willing to disregard their rights in the democracy," Israel said. "For them, it's not an expansion of their rights, it's economic survival. So the democracy issue can fall short."

Harris, on the campaign trail, seized on Trump’s promises to go after political detractors he called the "enemies from within," to paint him as "someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power."

The focus on Trump may have played into his win, said Republican campaign strategist Michael Dawidziak, of Bayport, who previously served as a campaign adviser to the late President George H.W. Bush.

"She made the same mistake that almost everybody who's ever run against Donald Trump has made, whether it was his primary challengers in the past, or Hillary [Clinton], they all made the same mistake — they spend more time talking about him than they talk about themselves, and that elevates him in importance in people's minds. It makes him the most important person in the room," Dawidziak said.

How Trump won on the economy

Despite the swirl of controversies surrounding Trump — a criminal conviction stemming from his 2016 campaign, a pair of federal indictments over his handling of classified documents and his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — capitalized on a Biden presidency that entered the race with low approval ratings.

Harris, who had an abbreviated three-month period to run her campaign after Biden withdrew in July, failed to distance herself from a president whom exit polls show a majority of voters disapproved. Exit polls showed 58% of voters surveyed disapproved of Biden’s job performance, compared with 41% who said they approved.

The disapproval ratings came as economic indicators show low unemployment, a dip in inflation and a record-setting stock market — but those figures could not overcome voter unease about prices that rose in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the high cost of borrowing as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to ease inflation.

"Trump articulated much better that he would be better on the economy," Dawidziak said.

Over the course of the campaign, Trump unveiled a series of proposals aimed at working Americans, including a proposal to exempt tips from income tax, a proposal to exempt overtime earnings from income tax and a pledge to cut auto insurance rates.

He also has called for tariffs on all imported goods and a revival of the 2017 tax plan that cut corporate taxes, an agenda that several economists contend could lead to inflationary pressure on the economy and an increase in the national deficit.

An analysis by Goldman Sachs released in early September estimated Trump’s tariff plan would increase inflation by 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points, and a report by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business projected that Trump’s series of campaign proposals could increase the national deficit by $5.8 trillion over a 10-year period from 2025 to 2034.

Trump’s campaign asserted in a previous statement responding to the critical economic reports that "Trump policies fuel growth, drive down inflation, inspire American manufacturing."

With Republicans winning control of the Senate, and on pace to win the House majority, Trump likely will have widespread support in both chambers to pass his economic agenda, though he may face some pushback, said William G. Gale, co-director of the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and a former senior economist for the Council of Economic Advisers under H.W. Bush.

"Trump has promised so much to so many people on tax that it is hard to know quite what to expect," Gale told Newsday. "Especially to the extent that Congress or the Administration wants to hold the deficit in check and therefore would have to pay for the tax cuts via increases in other taxes or cuts in spending."

By Laura Figueroa Hernandez

laura.figueroa@newsday.com@Laura_Figueroa

Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.