Voters won’t thank Kamala Harris for the state of the economy | Why voters are down on America’s remarkable economy

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Politicians rarely tell voters they are wrong. For Democrats trying to sell America’s economic success, the temptation must be strong. As our special report explains, the country’s economy is one of the strongest in the world. Americans are richer than at the start of President Joe Biden’s term. Yet they struggle to believe it: in weekly polling conducted by YouGov since mid-2021, almost twice as many say the economy is getting worse as say it’s getting better.

It is hard to judge what this will mean come November 5th. Historical examples do not shed light on the divergence between economic perceptions and reality, nor on the unique circumstance of a former president running for re-election while the incumbent is sidelined. Vice-President Kamala Harris is leading in national polls despite poor ratings on the economy. But if grumbling is the new normal, the economy could yet cost her the election.

During the covid-19 pandemic, economic optimism came untied from the macroeconomic indicators which reliably predicted it in preceding decades. The University of Michigan recorded its lowest-ever index of consumer sentiment—a long-running measure of how consumers feel about the economy—in June 2022, despite the economy looking healthy by most objective measures. The “vibecession” left economists and politicians scratching their heads.

Although sentiment has improved since then, Americans still underestimate the strength of their economy. This month, YouGov found that 39% of respondents incorrectly believed the country was in recession (only 36% said it was not). The media, which increasingly emphasise negative economic news, deserve some blame for this. But although Democrats can correctly say voters are wrong about Mr Biden’s economic record, it is cold comfort for Ms Harris: a recent poll by Ipsos found that Donald Trump had an eight-percentage-point lead over her on the question of whom voters would trust more to handle the economy.

A more optimistic pointer for Democrats is the partisan divide in consumer sentiment (see chart). While both parties’ supporters tend to feel more positive when they control the White House, Republicans “cheer louder” and “boo louder”, in the words of Ryan Cummings and Neale Mahoney, two economists. They find that this asymmetry explains around 30% of the gap between expected and observed consumer sentiment since Mr Biden took office. If economic negativity is partly confined to Republican partisans, the electoral cost could be smaller than it appears.

Ms Harris is also somewhat insulated by running as a non-incumbent. Despite her role in Mr Biden’s administration, the vice-president’s campaign has cast her as an advocate of change, not continuity. In the fundamentals model that underpins The Economist’s presidential forecast, we find that economic indicators predict the election chances of incumbent presidents but not other candidates from the incumbent party. When Mr Biden dropped out of the election, the economy also dropped out of our forecast.

These factors could explain why Ms Harris is outperforming historical incumbent-party candidates with similar economic conditions. Lenny Bronner, a data scientist at the Washington Post, found that this year’s employment growth points to a two-percentage-point popular-vote victory. John Sides, a political scientist, found the same for gdp growth. In our polling average, Ms Harris leads by 3.2 points. Voters march to the beat of their own drum. And so it is that many spend more than ever—and say they will vote for Ms Harris—while professing deep economic pessimism.

Yeah but the prices for grocery store staples are slightly higher than in 2019 so therefore we need to elect the fascist – median American voter