Sitting in a neighbourhood park in Philadelphia, just one day before the U.S. presidential election, registered voter Todd Miller said he would cast his ballot for Republican candidate Donald Trump this year. He regrets voting for Joe Biden in 2020 — and the economy is high on the list of reasons why.
“I feel the economy needs to change. I feel it’s on a downward trend,” Miller, an Oswego, N.Y., resident who was in town for a Philadelphia Eagles football game, said Monday.
“And I feel that there definitely needs to be change going forward because we’re not going in the direction that we need to be going in.”
Many voters have been telling pollsters the economy is the most important issue to them this election cycle. While it looks strong on paper — stable and growing at a faster pace than was expected — a lot of American voters are still feeling a bit glum about it all, no matter how good the data seems to say they should feel.
“I think the economy drives the overall morale of the nation. And if the morale is down, it creates a divide. The more we can patch up the divide, the economy is the No. 1 thing that’s going to do better,” Miller told CBC News.
As far as post-pandemic recoveries go, the U.S. is outshining its peers across the developed world on many fronts. Yet the data is a mess of contradictions.
The unemployment rate hit historic lows this year, but a recent jobs report shows that U.S. hiring has slowed. The value of homes is rising, but that makes homeownership a more expensive dream for those on the sidelines.
Consumer spending is strong, but household debt continues to tick upward. Wage growth has outpaced inflation, but perhaps not enough for everyone to feel like their purchasing power has kept up with the cost of living.
And the pain of inflation lingers even as the rate itself comes down — groceries in September were 2.3 per cent more expensive than they were at the same time a year ago.
“On the surface, because most things are in place for a very healthy U.S. economy, most things are in place that would suggest favouring the Democrats in this coming election,” said Sal Guatieri, director and senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto.
On the flipside, “if the economy’s not doing well going into an election, [voters] tend to blame the incumbent party. That’s just natural,” Guatieri said.
Why the economic vibes are bad
Some voters agree that they don’t feel good about the economy, but diverge on who to point fingers at.
Amber Eylef, a Philadelphia resident and supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, said the economy isn’t a major factor in her vote this year. But she thinks the economy is a mess — and assigned blame to Trump, who is trying to return to the White House.
“We’re still trying to clean up after Donald Trump’s last presidency, and we have a lot of work to do to get it where it needs to be,” she said.
One index shows that consumer sentiment is still somewhat in the dumps relative to historical averages, although its recovery is in line with those of the 2008 banking crisis and the inflation crisis of the early 1980s. Other polls show that some voters think the economy is getting worse.
Another report indicated that consumer sentiment improved in October, with Americans feeling somewhat sunnier going into the election — “but still did not break free of the narrow range that has prevailed over the past two years,” wrote Dana M. Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board, which conducted the survey.
Guatieri said that when “people believe that interest rates are coming down, other borrowing costs are coming down, that tends to support the economy.”
Still, housing is very expensive across the U.S., and “people are paying much higher prices today than three years ago, especially for necessities like food, rents and housing,” he said.
Presidents generally have little control over the economy. While there has been a rebound in manufacturing jobs during the Biden-Harris administration, their government also wrestled with unforeseen factors, like the worst inflation spike seen in decades and an economy weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Trump campaign has capitalized on those circumstances, spreading misinformation about inflation and jobs numbers, while claiming Trump’s own economy as the strongest in U.S. history (something that’s been disputed, with many feeling that Bill Clinton has him beat). Trump has embraced tariffs, and has claimed that he’d bring interest rates down (presidents don’t control those).
While Harris has narrowed the gap between her and Trump when it comes to whom voters would trust on the economy, Patrick Ruffini, a Republican strategist, said in an interview late last month that swing voters still prefer Trump on issues like the economy.
“I think [Harris has] narrowed a lot of advantages that Trump had earlier in the year, but it seems like some of the attacks on her are taking a toll.”
U.S. voters at competing Democratic and Republican rallies are expressing serious concerns about their economic futures, as the cost of living quickly emerges as a dominant issue of the 2024 presidential campaign.
The gap between economic data and consumer sentiment “is quite important,” said Kyla Scanlon, an American economist and author of In This Economy?. Scanlon coined the term “vibecession” to describe the divergence between data and feelings about the economy.
“I think that there’s always a lot of misconceptions about the economy … it’s so incredibly personal,” Scanlon told CBC News.
That dynamic is playing out in this year’s election, she said. Normally, the incumbent administration would benefit from a strong economy.
But “it’s very difficult to talk about [the economy] on a national stage because you’re talking in terms of averages, but people don’t live inside of an average,” she said. “They live inside of their personal experience.
“So, I think a lot of people have looked around and they’re like, you know, ‘I don’t feel so great in this economy at this moment. Why would I re-elect somebody or elect somebody who was associated with that presidency?'”
During a recent interview, Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross said that a voter’s perspective on the economy “is determined by what they’re going through on a daily basis.”
“It’s not the Dow Jones industrial average,” she said. “People are looking at whether they have money to do the things they were able to do just a few years ago, and most would tell you they cannot.”
