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Republicans and Democrats Highly Divided in Economic Outlook Under Trump

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Consumer sentiment among Republicans has soared to its highest point since Donald J. Trump left the White House, while declining among Democrats.Donald J. Trump won last week’s election in part by promising to fix an economy many voters believed was broken.Republicans, at least, seem to believe him.Consumer sentiment among Republicans has soared nearly 30 percent in the week since Election Day, according to data from Morning Consult, an online survey firm. Republicans, according to the survey, now feel better about the economy than at any time since Mr. Trump lost his bid for re-election four years ago.Democrats, unsurprisingly, have had a very different reaction. Sentiment in that group has dropped 13 percent since Election Day, its lowest level since early 2023. For political independents, relatively little has changed in their attitudes toward the economy in recent days.

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Consumer sentiment by party identification
Note: Data shown as five-day moving average. Political independents not shown.Source: Morning ConsultBy The New York TimesThe big partisan shifts in Americans’ economic views are not a surprise. There have been similar swings after past presidential elections, although the trend has become more pronounced in recent decades. And voters have said for months that their economic expectations would depend partly on whether their preferred candidate won the White House.“Consumers have been telling us all year long their expectation for the economy is contingent on the outcome of the election,” said Joanne Hsu, director of the University of Michigan’s long-running survey of consumer sentiment. She expects to see large partisan swings in that survey as well, she said, when data from after the election becomes available this month.Measures of consumer sentiment have been depressed for much of President Biden’s time in office, though indicators such as the unemployment rate and wage growth have indicated a strong economy. In polls and interviews, Americans have cited inflation as one of the main sources of their dissatisfaction with Mr. Biden, even as inflation has cooled.Economic sentiment has begun to improve in recent months, however, perhaps suggesting that more Americans are starting to see improvements in inflation in their daily lives — albeit too late to help Democrats in this month’s elections.“Consumers probably are seeing and to some extent digesting some of the good economic news,” said Deni Koenhemsi, head of economic analysis for Morning Consult.Ms. Koenhemsi noted that consumers’ expectations had improved more rapidly than their assessment of the economy’s current state. That suggests that many are still struggling with high prices but becoming more optimistic about the months ahead.That gradual process isn’t surprising, said Neale Mahoney, a Stanford University economist who worked in Mr. Biden’s administration. In research published last year, Mr. Mahoney and a colleague found that it takes time for sentiment to adjust as inflation cools and people become used to the new, higher price of many goods and services.“Even if measured inflation has decreased, the way people experience inflation, they may still be acclimatizing to the price increases that were most acute in summer of 2022 into 2023,” Mr. Mahoney said.The election, he added, could accelerate that process, at least for Republicans, who might be more inclined to reset their expectations once their preferred candidate is in office. More

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    Democrats Got the Recovery They Wanted. It Wasn’t Enough.

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    America’s economic growth is the envy of its global counterparts. But voters wanted more from the Biden administration — specifically, lower prices.Donald Trump has won the 2024 presidential election. Follow live updates and results.Every major U.S. ally is uncomfortably familiar with one of President Biden’s favorite charts. It is a graph of economic recoveries in the wealthy world since the end of the pandemic recession. It shows growth flatlining for the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan over the past two years — while in the United States, growth keeps rocketing up.That chart helps explain why voters have punished ruling parties in election after post-Covid election around the world. Sluggish growth, coupled with a surge in consumer prices, proved toxic for the Conservative Party in Britain. It helped hobble President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition in France and contributed to Japan’s longtime leaders, the Liberal Democrats, losing their majority this fall.Germany’s governing coalition has been so weakened by recession and so flustered by disagreements over how to revive growth that it teetered this week on the brink of collapse.Advisers to Mr. Biden and to Vice President Kamala Harris, his successor candidate in the presidential election, had hoped that America’s outlier economy would rescue them from a similar fate.It did not.Ms. Harris lost to former President Donald J. Trump. Democrats will spend at least months parsing data for conclusions on what drove the defeat. Certainly, economic factors were only one contributor.But as Europe’s stumbling economies woke on Wednesday to the news of Ms. Harris’s defeat, one thing was immediately clear: America’s growth engine may be the envy of the world, but it is not the envy of the American public.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Working-Class Voters Are Pivotal. Both Candidates Are Vying for Their Support.

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    Kamala Harris’s plans offer a bigger boost for the working class, but Donald Trump seems to be convincing voters.Bernadette Daywalt had yet to decide whom to vote for in the presidential election. But the 69-year-old retiree said her decision would probably come down to economics.She and her 82-year-old sister have struggled to keep up with rising grocery prices over the past few years, and they now frequent a food pantry in the Philadelphia suburb where they live.“I think we’re headed downhill right now, with the cost of food, the cost of everything,” Ms. Daywalt said as she checked on her voter registration at an outreach van parked outside the Elmwood Park Zoo on a crisp October afternoon. She voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, and she felt better economically when he was president.Ms. Daywalt’s perceptions underscore a tough reality facing Democrats, who have been trying to recapture a working-class vote that has been slipping away from them.Many economists say Vice President Kamala Harris’s economic proposals would do more to help everyday Americans than the agenda put forward by former President Donald J. Trump. One model suggests that her package would boost post-tax income for the poorest Americans by 18 percent by 2026, much more than the 1.4 percent bump Mr. Trump’s ideas would offer.Income Effects of Trump vs. Harris Economic ProposalsAfter tax and transfers, estimates from the Penn Wharton Budget Model suggest that Kamala Harris’s proposals would boost low-income groups while costing rich ones.

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    Percent Change as of 2026
    Notes: Percent changes are from the baseline expectation for income in 2026. Baseline income is about $20,000 for the bottom quintile, $81,400 for the middle quintile and $327,000 for the group in the 90-95 percent range.Source: Penn Wharton Budget ModelBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Inflation Is Basically Back to Normal. Why Do Voters Still Feel Blah?

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    Consumers still give the economy poor marks, though the job market is strong and price increases have faded for months.Grocery inflation has been cooling sharply, but Tamira Flamer, 27, says she hasn’t noticed. What she knows is that paper plates and meat remain more expensive than they were a few years ago.“I feel like it’s been rough,” said Ms. Flamer, a mother of two who drives for Amazon, while standing outside a Dollar General near her home in Norristown, Pa., on Sunday.Ms. Flamer, an undecided voter who says she is most focused on economic issues, underscores a challenge for Vice President Kamala Harris as the presidential election barrels toward its final days.Voters say that they are very focused on the economy as they head to the polls, yet surveys suggest that they feel relatively glum about its recent track record. That could hurt Ms. Harris while helping her opponent, former President Donald J. Trump.The lingering pessimism is also something of a puzzle. The job market has been chugging along, although more slowly, overall growth has been healthy and even inflation is more or less back to normal. Inflation data released on Thursday showed that prices have increased by a mild 2.1 percent over the past year.Confidence has crept back up as inflation has cooled, but it remains much lower than it was the last time the economy looked as solid as it does today. That is true for both the University of Michigan’s confidence index and a separate measure produced by the Conference Board, an organization that conducts business and economic research.Large Swing in Republican ConfidenceRepublicans were optimistic about the economy when former President Donald J. Trump was in office, and turned more negative as soon as President Biden was elected.

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    Consumer Confidence Index
    Source: University of Michigan By The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Polls Show Trump’s Edge Shrinking on Voters’ Top Issue: The Economy

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    It remains priority No. 1 for many voters, particularly those who are still undecided, according to Times/Siena polling. But can Kamala Harris translate her gains into votes?The economy is still the No. 1 issue in the presidential election. Voters rated it as their top priority in the latest New York Times/Siena College poll, as they have in every Times/Siena poll this year.And while former President Donald J. Trump remains the more trusted candidate in terms of handling the economy, Vice President Kamala Harris has closed much of the gap.Ms. Harris is in an unusual position, running as a sitting vice president alongside an unpopular president. Many voters say President Biden’s policies have hurt them — more than say the same about Mr. Trump’s policies — and economic concerns are a large driver of those feelings, recent polls show.Large majorities of voters rate the economy as only fair or poor, even though inflation has cooled and many other traditional indicators are positive. (Though experts note that concerns about inflation often linger, even as inflation rates lower.)But Ms. Harris has made some gains on the economy. In a September Times/Siena poll, likely voters favored Mr. Trump’s handling of the economy by 13 percentage points; that lead had shrunk to just six percentage points in the latest Times/Siena poll, which was conducted last week. Other pollsters have shown similar gains for the vice president on the issue.

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    Regardless of how you might vote, do you trust Kamala Harris or Donald Trump to do a better job on the economy?
    Notes: Question wording has been condensed. Margins are calculated using unrounded percentages. Sources: New York Times/Siena College surveys among likely voters conducted Sept. 3 to 6, 2024; Sept. 11 to 16, 2024; and Oct. 20 to 23, 2024. By The New York TimesMost currently view the economy negativelyThinking about the nation’s economy, how would you rate economic conditions today?

    Notes: Among registered voters. Question wording varies slightly by pollster. Sources: Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, ABC News, Bloomberg News, Consumer Comfort Index: State of the Economy, SSRS, NORC, Washington Post, New York Times/Siena College.By The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How Is the Economy for Black Voters? A Complex Question Takes Center Stage.

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    The 2024 election could be won or lost on the strength of the Black vote, which could in turn be won or lost based on the strength of the American economy. So it is no surprise that candidates are paying a lot of attention — and lip service — to which of the past two administrations did more to improve the lives of Black workers.Former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate, makes big claims about the gains Black workers made under his watch, saying that he had the “lowest African American unemployment rate” and “the lowest African American poverty rate ever recorded.” But those measures improved even more under the Biden administration, with joblessness touching a record low and poverty falling even further.“Currently, Black workers are doing better than they were in 2019,” said Valerie Wilson, a labor economist whose work focuses on racial disparities at the liberal-leaning advocacy organization EPI Action.That may sound like an unambiguous victory for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, especially when paired with a recent increase in homeownership rates for Black families and the fact that the Black unemployment rate dipped in September.But even with those notable wins, the economy has not been uniformly good for all Black Americans. Rapid inflation has been tough on many families, chipping away at solid wage growth. Although the labor market for Black workers was the strongest ever recorded for much of 2022 and 2023, the long shadow of big price increases may be keeping people from feeling like they are getting ahead.In fact, nearly three in four Black respondents rated the economy as fair or poor, a recent New York Times/Siena College poll of Black likely voters found. And that is notable, because Black voters do tend to prioritize economic issues — not just for themselves, but also for the overall welfare of Black people — when they are thinking about whether and how to vote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Jobs Report Gives Kamala Harris Another Boost

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    Vice President Kamala Harris probably could not have hoped for a better run of pre-election economic data than what the United States has enjoyed over the last month.In recent weeks, key inflation indicators have fallen close to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target rate, after years of running hot under Ms. Harris and President Biden. Federal Reserve officials cut interest rates by a half percentage point, immediately bringing mortgage rates to their lowest level in two years. The Commerce Department confirmed that the economy has grown at a robust 3 percent clip over the last year, after adjusting for rising prices. The Census Bureau reported that the typical household’s inflation-adjusted income jumped in 2023.Those numbers had encouraged Democrats, including policymakers in the White House and close to Ms. Harris’s campaign team. Recent polls have shown Ms. Harris closing the gap, or pulling even, with former President Donald J. Trump on the question of who can best handle the economy and inflation.But it was Friday’s employment report — 254,000 jobs gained, with wages growing faster than prices — that appeared to give Harris boosters a particularly large dose of confidence. The report came less than a day after striking dockworkers agreed to return to work through the end of the year, avoiding what could have been a major economic disruption with a month to go before the election.“The combination of this great job market and easing inflation is generating solid real wage and income gains,” said Jared Bernstein, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. “While those continue to power this expansion forward, we’re also seeing record investment in key sectors, an entrepreneurial boom and gains in worker bargaining power to help ensure that workers get their fair share of all this growth.”Even Mr. Biden, who has attempted to strike a balance between cheering the economy’s performance and acknowledging the struggles created by years of fast-rising prices, sounded more upbeat than normal on Friday. He made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room to celebrate the jobs report and the end of the port strike, which the president and his aides helped broker.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    In Nevada, Economy Tops Issues as Unemployment Remains High

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    The state is among a handful that will decide the presidential contest, and workers have felt increased prices at the grocery store and gas station.Sold-out shows along the Strip. Crews constructing a course for a major Formula 1 race. A record number of passengers at Harry Reid International Airport.For much of the past year, Las Vegas, the anchor of Nevada’s economy, has watched in delight as visitors have flocked to town for conventions, football games and summer pool parties, further solidifying its rebound from the doldrums after the pandemic shutdowns.But statewide, the economy is still burdened by high unemployment and higher costs of living — twin pocketbook struggles that animate voters here in one of a handful of states expected to decide the November presidential election.And about a quarter of Nevada voters in a New York Times/Siena College poll last month named the economy as their top issue. It was cited nearly twice as often as any other concern, comparable to findings in other swing states.A topic with particular resonance among Nevada workers — eliminating federal taxation on tips — burst into the national discourse after former President Donald J. Trump told a crowd in Las Vegas that he intended to do away with the practice if elected. He was inspired, Mr. Trump has said, by a conversation with a waitress in the city.His opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, later endorsed the idea during a campaign stop in Las Vegas, but paired the proposal with a promise to raise the federal minimum wage.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Harris and Trump Embrace Tariffs

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    Both Democrats and Republicans are expressing support for tariffs to protect American industry, reversing decades of trade thinking in Washington.When Donald J. Trump ran for president in 2016, there was not much love for tariffs in Washington. Many Republicans and Democrats believed that putting levies on imports created economic inefficiencies and that freer trade was the best recipe for growth.That view has largely fallen out of fashion in 2024. While Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, differ greatly in their campaign proposals, both of their parties are increasingly embracing tariffs as an essential tool in protecting American manufacturers from Chinese and other global competitors.It has been a sharp reversal from previous decades, when most politicians fought to lower tariffs rather than raise them. But the loss of American manufacturing jobs as a result of globalization and China’s focus on churning out cheap exports have created a bipartisan backlash against more open trade. Given that Mr. Trump’s 2016 win capitalized on such sentiments, Democrats have been striving to avoid losing voters opposed to free trade.“On economic policy and trade issues, you have both major parties moving in the same direction,” said Nick Iacovella, a senior vice president at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which advocates tariffs and domestic investments in industry.Mr. Iacovella said that Mr. Trump would most likely go further on tariffs than Ms. Harris would, but that no matter who won the election “it’s still going to be a tariffs administration, and an industrial policy one.”Ms. Harris has sought to differentiate herself from Mr. Trump’s trade proposals, which include tariffs of 10 percent to 20 percent on most imports, as well as levies of more than 60 percent on China. Many economists say that level of tariffs would drive up prices for consumers, since companies would be likely to pass on higher import costs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More