WASHINGTON — Throughout the election season, Republican Donald Trump has consistently outperformed Democrat Kamala Harris on the issue voters care most about: the economy.

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

“Are you doing better now than you were four years ago?” Trump asked this question at rally after rally in the weeks before the election.

According to exit polls, the majority of voters answered “No.”

According to an exit poll from Edison Research, which conducted the poll on behalf of an organization, 67 percent of voters surveyed had a negative view of the economy, while 45 percent said their financial situation was “worse now” than four years ago. Consortium of US media organizations.

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 6.4% when he took office in January 2021, and global supply chain shortages affected U.S. manufacturing and some businesses closed as consumers stayed home or minimized.

As Biden prepares to leave office, unemployment has fallen to 4.1% and average hourly wages have increased 22.3% compared to February 2020, when the pandemic began, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, this data did not ease voters’ concerns after inflation rose to 9.1% in June 2022. That rate has since fallen 2.4%, but prices remain higher than before the pandemic and increases in interest rates have made borrowing more costly.

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

“What political scientists have found is that what people feel at the end of the first quarter of an election year is actually what they think about when they go to the polls,” Hofstra University political science professor Richard Himelfarb told Newsday. “So the fact that inflation is falling doesn’t really matter. The damage has been done.”

Harris’ competing messages

Harris described herself as a “middle-class kid” sensitive to the needs of working Americans, but her economic messages also competed with her talk of Trump being a threat to democracy; It was an argument that Democrats have since accepted after his loss. There is little to challenge voters worried about the post-pandemic economy.

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

“The key challenge for the Democrats was that they had to make this not a referendum on the economy, but a referendum on Donald Trump. The problem with this strategic imperative is that it ignores the economy, which is the biggest issue for voters,” Eski said. Long Island congressman Steve Israel is a Huntington Democrat and currently the director of the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University.

Israel, who advised Biden’s 2020 campaign and served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for four years, said voters continue to signal their economic situation as Harris and Democrats try to “litigation a menu of important issues, including abortion and democracy.” Troubles were the most important problem.

“When citizens feel that their economic security is at risk, they tend to ignore their rights in democracy,” Israel said. “For them, this is not a matter of expanding their rights, but of economic survival. So the issue of democracy may fall short.”

On the campaign trail, Harris capitalized on Trump’s promise to go after political opponents she called “enemies from within” and paint him as “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and pursuing unchecked power.”

Republican campaign strategist Michael Dawidziak of Bayport, who previously served as a campaign adviser to the late President George H.W. Bush, said focusing on Trump could have been instrumental in his victory.

“He’s made the same mistake that almost everyone running against Donald Trump, whether it’s his biggest rivals in the past or Hillary (Clinton), they all make the same mistake, which is spending more time talking about him than they do,” Dawidziak said. “This increases his importance in people’s minds, making him the most important person in the room,” he said.

How did Trump win on the economy?

Despite the controversy surrounding Trump — a criminal conviction stemming from his 2016 campaign, his handling of classified documents and a pair of federal indictments over his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — he has benefited from Biden’s presidency. race with low approval ratings.

Harris, who had a short three months to campaign after Biden withdrew in July, has failed to distance herself from a president whom exit polls show a majority of voters disapprove of. Exit polls showed that 58 percent of voters surveyed disapproved of Biden’s job performance, while 41 percent said they approved.

The disapproval ratings came as economic indicators showed low unemployment, falling inflation and a record-breaking stock market; However, these figures could not alleviate voters’ uneasiness about rising prices and high borrowing costs after the Covid-19 outbreak. The Central Bank increased interest rates to reduce inflation.

“Trump expressed much better that he would be better on the economy,” Dawidziak said.

During the campaign, Trump unveiled a number of proposals for working Americans, including a proposal to exempt tips from income taxes, a proposal to exempt overtime earnings from income taxes, and a pledge to lower auto insurance rates.

He also called for tariffs on all imported goods and the revival of the 2017 tax plan that reduced corporate taxes; This agenda, which many economists argue, could lead to inflationary pressure on the economy and an increase in the national deficit.

An analysis published by Goldman Sachs in early September estimated that 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 estimated that a series of Trump campaign proposals would increase the national deficit by 5 percent. He predicted that it could raise $8 trillion. Over a 10-year period from 2025 to 2034.

In its previous statement responding to critical economic reports, Trump’s campaign claimed that “Trump policies fuel growth, reduce inflation, inspire American manufacturing.”

With Republicans gaining control of the Senate and on pace to win the House majority, Trump is likely to have broad support in both chambers to pass his economic agenda but could face some pushback, he said. former senior economist for the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and the Council of Economic Advisers under H. W. Bush.

“Trump has promised so much on taxes to so many people that it’s hard to know what to expect,” Gale told Newsday. “Especially if Congress or the Administration wants to keep the deficit in check and therefore has to pay for the tax cuts through increases in other taxes or spending cuts.”

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