“The economy, stupid.”
The now legendary phrase with which political advisor James Carville guided Bill Clinton’s campaign team to the White House in 1992 could easily also be the motto of the close 2024 presidential race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris.
The economy is the issue that most interests voters in the United States and the one that will most influence their decision when going to the polls.
According to a Gallup study published on October 9, the economy stands out as the main issue of these elections – among a list of 22 – and “could be an important factor for 9 out of 10 voters”.
The Trump and Harris campaigns know this well and that is why they have incorporated it into the center of their electoral agenda, like other issues such as abortion and migration.
Below we will tell you how much weight these issues will have and where they can tilt the electoral results, as well as the influence that a thorny issue that reality has imposed on the campaign can have: the crisis in the Middle East and the current war in Gaza.
Vote with your pocket
In April 2021, inflation in the United States climbed to 4.2% and began to rise until reaching a maximum of 9.1% in June 2022, the highest rate in 40 years and well above the 2% target set by the Reserve Federal.
Since then, the consumer price index has dropped significantly, reaching 2.4% last September. For its part, the unemployment rate is now at 4.1% and has remained below 5% since September 2021, which experts consider to be a situation of full employment.
Despite this, and the fact that the country did not fall into a recession as many experts feared, Americans are worried about the economy. And this is seen in the surveys.
In the Gallup study, 90% of those surveyed indicated that the economy was “extremely important” or “very important.” In fact, it is the only issue on which a majority (52%) agreed that they described it as “extremely important.”
It is the first time since the 2008 financial crisis that a majority of voters (in that case 55%) rate the economy as “extremely important” when deciding their vote.
An analysis published in September by the Pew Research think tank agreed that the economy is the central issue of this campaign: 81% of registered voters consulted said that it is “very important” for their decision in these elections.
And who does this benefit?
According to Gallup, the 54% of voters believe Trump can handle the economy better than Harris.
“The reason why voters are focusing on Trump is, in large part, simply a reaction against the high cost of living,” Liz Mair, Republican political advisor and president of the consulting company Mair Strategies, tells BBC Mundo. .
“People are going to vote with their pockets”he adds.
The expert explains that, although inflation is not exclusively attributable to Biden and has occurred in many places around the world, voters end up blaming the party in government.
“As an analyst I know how long it takes for things to have an effect on inflation and easily half of the inflation we have had is attributable to Trump, but what the average voter takes into account is that they saw prices rise a lot in the middle 2022”, he indicates.
Whit Ayres, Republican pollster and president of the North Star polling company, points out that determining who voters trust most when it comes to managing the economy is one of the most important indicators when conducting electoral surveys and that, in Right now, many voters perceive that the economy under Trump before the pandemic was better for them than under Biden.
“And for many people it was: interest rates and mortgage rates were a third of what they are now. Groceries that cost $100 in 2019 cost $125 now. That has made life very difficult for those with less income,” says Ayres.
Aware of the discontent over the economy, Harris has said her priority will be reducing the cost of food and housing for working families.. To this end, it proposes prohibiting speculation on food prices and establishing aid of $25,000 for those who want to buy their first home, as well as creating incentives to increase the supply of housing.
“Harris is emphasizing the economy and his proposal to help the middle class, to try to close the gap of confidence in the management of the economy that now favors Trump. That’s just what she should do,” Ayres says.
Trump, for his part, has promised “end inflation and make America affordable again.”
He has also proposed a reduction in interest rates – something that does not correspond to the Executive, but to the Federal Reserve, which is autonomous – and affirms that his proposal to deport millions of undocumented migrants will help reduce pressure on the cost of dwelling.
“Economic issues and immigration are the most favorable for Trump,” highlights Ayres.
hot border
Migration and the situation at the border are considered “extremely important” or “very important” for 7 in 10 American voters, according to Gallup.
“Traditionally, Democrats would like to focus on immigration, but this time it is not a good issue for them. Voters, more than being interested in comprehensive immigration reform, what they want is to stop the entry of people across the border,” says Liz Mair.
What has happened?
The United States has an immigration system that many analysts describe as “broken.”
Although its economy needs migrants, the system makes legal entry very difficult and does not allow the country to outline the type of migrants it wishes to receive, because while the 66% of all residence permits are granted to relatives of citizens or residents of the country, only 14% are granted for work reasonsalmost the same as through asylum and humanitarian reasons (13%).
It is a problem that has been going on for decades.
After reaching the White House, Biden tried to promote immigration reform – which did not obtain approval from Congress – and sought to lift many of Trump’s measures to stop migration, some of which had been described as racist, such as the travel ban. for people from predominantly Muslim countries.
During the Biden administration, however, there was a large increase in the number of attempts to enter the United States through the southern border, which reached a record 2.4 million in 2023, although they have fallen substantially in 2024.
At the same time, the images of thousands of migrants in “caravans” walking through Mexico and Central America towards the US, as well as their visible presence in iconic places such as Times Square in New York (where in many cases they have been transferred in buses paid for by Republican governors) have supported the Republican discourse that there is no control over the borders.
To this it must be added that Trump accuses immigrants of “poisoning” the blood of the country and being responsible for an alleged increase in crime (despite the fact that official statistics show that there has been a drop in serious crimes and, furthermore, that migrants do not tend to commit more crimes than Americans themselves).
The effect of all this on the polls is that 88% of registered voters support increased border securityincluding 96% of Trump supporters and 80% of Harris supporters, according to a Pew study published this month.
“People are upset with what is happening at the border. They feel it has been very poorly managed. It gives the impression of chaos and anarchy and this is the USA, we’re supposed to be able to do things better”, notes Mair.
Faced with this issue, Trump proposes finishing building the border wall with Mexico and deporting undocumented migrants present in that country. These initiatives not only enjoy the support of Republican voters, but also of more than a third of Hispanic voters and 40% of black voters, according to a survey conducted by The New York Times.
Hispanics and blacks have historically been two key voting groups for Democrats. Although a majority of them still say they support Harris, her advantage over Trump among these voters has decreased compared to what Hillary Clinton had in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.
In the campaign, Harris has relied on her past as California attorney general to ensure that she will protect the border, that she will uphold the laws and that It is going to be tough against criminal groups that traffic drugs and people.
The Democratic candidate has also highlighted that this year there was a bipartisan proposal in Congress, among whose promoters was a Republican legislator, which would have allowed for strengthening border security, but which was scrapped at the request of Trump, who – according to Harris – blocked this initiative to electorally benefit from the situation on the border.
According to the Gallup poll, Trump has a 9 percentage point lead over Harris when voters are asked who could handle immigration better.
Abortion: the fight for the right to decide
Almost 7 in 10 voters (66%) consider the issue of abortion to be “extremely important” or “very important,” according to the Gallup study.
For decades this issue was present in Republican electoral campaigns that sought to overturn the 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling, through which the Supreme Court enshrined the right to abortion throughout the United States.
That was exactly one of the promises of the 2016 election campaign that Trump made and then fulfilled by appointing a majority of conservative judges to the highest US court who, in 2022, eliminated federal protection of the right to abortion with a new ruling.
“After 50 years of failures, without anyone having achieved anything similar, I was able to kill Roe vs Wade, to the great surprise of everyone”the former president wrote in a message on social networks on May 17, 2023.
But that judicial triumph of the Republican agenda in 2022 soon turned into a series of electoral setbacks for that party both in the midterm legislative elections held that same year and in other votes in different states such as Ohio, Virginia or Kentucky. , in which the voters have shown their rejection of overly restrictive abortion bans.
In the elections on November 5, proposals to protect the right to abortion will be voted on in at least 10 states, while only one will have a proposal to restrict this right.
This is an issue that clearly favors Democrats and Harris’ candidacy. who, according to the Gallup poll, has a 9 percentage point advantage over Trump when voters are asked who would be more competent to handle this issue. This perception is shared by 16% of Republicans.
Liz Mair highlights that Harris has many strengths on this issue, including the very fact of being a woman, but also her legal training and her past as attorney general.
Beyond being an issue that mobilizes traditionally Democratic voters, Mair believes that abortion weakens support for Trump within Republican ranks in two different ways.
First, among conservative women who campaigned for decades to achieve a total ban on abortion and who now do not like the attempts at moderation that Trump has made during the campaign.
“Those are the people who used to volunteer to work on the campaign, making calls, door-to-door visits, etc. Now they are not particularly motivated by Trumpwhose rhetoric about abortion makes him appear to them as someone very supportive of abortion. Furthermore, they already achieved the main result they always wanted: the reversal of Roe vs. Wade,” he says.
The other aspect of the Republican vote that Trump would be losing is that of Republican women who, despite declaring themselves “pro-life,” have more flexible positions regarding abortion.
According to a KFF survey, the 79% of Republican women support laws that protect the right to abortion when patients have pregnancy-related medical emergencies, while 69% believe it should be allowed in cases of rape or incest.
In the case of Republican women of reproductive age (18 years to 49 years), 53% support there being a federal law that guarantees the right to abortion.
“I think there are a lot of people who would normally vote Republican who may not do so in this election, solely because of this issue,” Mair notes.
Given the setbacks suffered by Republicans on the issue of abortion in recent months, Trump has tried not to establish a position on the issue, saying that this is up to each state.
For her part, Harris has defended women’s right to decide on abortion and has said that she wants to legally enshrine the protections previously contemplated by Roe v. Wade.
Israel, Gaza and the Middle East
The surprise attack by the Palestinian group Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, which began the current war in Gaza, put the issue of the crisis in the Middle East on the agenda of the election campaign in the United States.
Less than two weeks after the attack, pro-Palestinian groups in the United States had already baptized President Joe Biden as “Genocide Joe” and in Michigan, a pendulum state that is also the state in the country with the highest proportion of citizens of Arab descent, a movement emerged to pressure the president (and then a candidate for re-election) to demand an end to the war and withdraw his support for Israel.
The call Uncommitted movement garners more than 100,000 votes in Michigan Democratic primaryequivalent to more than 13% of the total and a significant amount for a state in which Biden won in 2020 by just 150,000 votes.
Throughout the Democratic primary, uncommitted voters totaled more than 700,000 votes nationwide.
This movement hoped to find greater receptivity in Harris, once she assumed the Democratic candidacy. However, although she has been harsher than Biden in criticizing the way in which Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has carried out the war in Gaza, at no time has she questioned US support for Israel.
In fact, in August none of the spokespersons for this movement were allowed to speak before the Democratic National Convention held in Chicago.
At that event, Harris said that the suffering in Gaza was heartbreaking and said she was working to end the war so that Palestinians can exercise their rights to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination; at the same time that Israel remains safe and the release of the Israelis held hostage by Hamas is achieved.
In mid-September, the uncommitted movement announced that it would not endorse Harris’ candidacy because she had not responded to a request to meet with American-Palestinian families who have lost loved ones in the war in Gaza.
The group also called on its followers not to vote for Donald Trump or any other candidate.
And how does this affect the electoral race?
It’s complicated. For those voters who want to cast their vote based on their empathy with the situation of those who live in Gaza, these elections pose an important dilemma because the race looks so close that a few thousand votes in one direction or the other could be decisive.
The issue is that while Massive noncommittal abstention could seal Harris’ defeat in Michiganat the same time he would be favoring a victory for Trump, who has called himself the “protector of Israel.”
In fact, during his administration Trump made some decisions – such as the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the consequent move of the US Embassy there – that were rejected by the Palestinians and the Arab world in general.
The situation in the Middle East could also affect the vote of Jewish Americans, especially in Pennsylvania, the largest of the swing states, where it is estimated that there are some 300,000 voters, equivalent to 3% of the registry, according to data from the American Jewish Population Project of Brandeis University (Massachusetts).
Pew estimates indicate that in 2020, around 70% of American Jews voted for Biden and 27% for Trump.
A Pew poll taken before the debate between Harris and Trump this year, gave 65% support for Harris and 34% for Trump within this group.
But the vote of American Jews may not only be affected by the situation in the Middle East, but also by the perception that anti-Semitism in the United States has increased over the last year.
According to a survey by the NORC pollster carried out in the second half of August, a 43% of Jewish Americans say anti-Semitism will impact how they vote.
Within that group, 17% said that, although they normally vote for Democrats, this time they will support Republicans, while 9% said that, although they usually support Republicans, this time they will vote for Democrats.
And what is the position of the rest of the voters?
According to the Gallup poll, 31% of American voters consider the situation in the Middle East “extremely important”while another 33% rate it as “very important.”
These data should be taken with caution because historically foreign policy issues are not the most decisive in elections, especially when – as in this case – sending our own soldiers into combat is not at stake.
In that sense, a survey published in August by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs expressly asked how important the issue of the war in Gaza would be in their vote in these elections, and 17% said it would have a lot of weight, while 30% said it would have a lot of weight in their vote in these elections. % said it would have quite a bit of weight.
According to this latest survey, there are two issues that will have the most consideration when voting. One of them is the protection of American democracy with 81% (59% say they give it a lot of weight and 22%, a lot of weight). This was one of the main flags of Biden’s candidacy before he retired and Harris has continued to fly it, but without giving it the greatest prominence.
The other issue that voters give a lot of weight (58%) and quite a bit of weight (27%) to… To paraphrase James Carville, “it’s still the economy, stupid.”
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