Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris is closing the gap on Republican Donald Trump when it comes to the economy behind better messaging and recent surges across economic indicators, The Hill reported Sunday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record high on Friday, charged by a positive report on inflation and the anticipation of a soft landing for the economy. The S&P 500 hit a record high on Thursday.
A recent Marist poll showed Harris trailing Trump by 3% on who would be best to handle the economy, bettering President Joe Biden, who trailed Trump by 9% in the same poll published in June when he was still the Democrat nominee, according to The Hill.
While Harris benefits from the timing of the recent economic data, including the Federal Reserve slashing interest rates by half a point, she’s also better at messaging than Biden and Trump, one expert said in the aftermath of the Sept. 10 presidential debate.
“Every time they gave him a question on inflation, he moved it to some other issue. Every time they gave him a chance to statistically and factually differentiate himself from the vice president, he chose to make ad hominem attacks. He couldn’t stay on message,” pollster Frank Luntz said on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal about the debate.
“The outcome of that was in almost every survey a 2-to-1 advantage for Harris,” Luntz said.
Harris still faces an uphill climb in trying to reap the rewards as part of the Biden-Harris administration while simultaneously laying out a vision for her economic plan over the next four years.
A poll last week by the Place America First super PAC found that 70% of suburban women say Harris lacks "viable solutions" for the economy compared to Trump. Also, a recent study by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation showed Harris’ economic plan would increase taxes by $4.1 trillion from 2025 to 2034 and lead to the loss of nearly 800,000 jobs.
"We find the tax policies would raise top tax rates on corporate and individual income to among the highest in the developed world, slowing economic growth and reducing competitiveness," the group said in its analysis.
Further, the lone Federal Reserve official, Michelle Bowman, who did not support the recent rate cut warned that the risk of an inflation spike remained high.
“I think we are much closer to neutral than would have been the case under pre-pandemic conditions, and I did not see the peak stance of policy as restrictive to the same extent that my colleagues may have," Bowman said.