A new AP-NORC poll released Friday has good but kind of frustrating news for Kamala Harris: After months of polling showing registered voters think Donald Trump would be better at handling the economy than Joe Biden or Harris — yes, that Donald Trump! — the new poll, taken after Harris shellacked Trump in their only debate, shows that
About 4 in 10 registered voters say Republican Trump would do a better job handling the economy, while a similar number say that about the Democratic vice president. […] About 1 in 10 voters don’t trust either candidate, and a similar share has equal faith in them.
We suspect that a separate poll of the same folks might find that roughly equal percentages believe that you should only cross the street when no cars are coming, or that you’d have a pretty good chance of jumping over any cars like an action hero before they hit you.
Still, it’s yet another poll that suggests that Harris is doing better and better in head-to-gross-muddled-pervy-head comparisons, so hooray!
The poll showed Harris coming closer to Trump on a number of issues where she and Biden had previously trailed the blobby liar. Here, look at a chart!
The AP explains that the new poll is
a warning sign for Trump, who has tried to link Harris to President Joe Biden’s economic track record. The new poll suggests that Harris may be escaping some of the president’s baggage on the issue, undercutting what was previously one of Trump’s major advantages.
This is where we point out that maybe the AP could think a bit more critically before repeating the GOP talking points about Biden’s economic track record being terrible. Hell, at least get the word “perceived” in there!
The poll also found that only about a third of voters say the economy is “somewhat” or “very good,” but that they’re far happier about their own situation, with around “6 in 10 voters saying their household’s finances are somewhat or very good. Both of those numbers have remained steady over the course of the year, despite falling inflation.” Yes, that is the sound of us concussing ourselves.
Just to remind y’all, Biden’s economy is pretty goddamned good (and it is also Harris’s!), not that the AP will come right out and say so. Instead, we get sentences like the one above, giving you part of the economic data, even noting the gap between perception and reality, but not actually saying people are misperceiving anything, because heavens that would be biased, wouldn’t it?
Still, the comparative improvement for Harris may indicate that her message is getting through, and that at least part of the electorate is wondering how Trump will bring their grocery prices down by drill baby drilling.
But let’s also take a look at a few other findings in the poll, which has Harris roughly equal to Trump on issues that are often thought to favor Republicans, like crime (a dead heat, with the prosecutor up by one point over the convicted felon) and Trump’s single-minded fixation, immigration, where Harris trails Trump by only five points. It’s also probably significant that when asked to name their top issues, the economy was the most important to most voters, while immigration is the fourth most important, after health care (where Harris has a huge advantage, 50 percent to 30 percent) and crime.
Harris also has a big polling advantage over Trump when it comes to trust on abortion policy (55 to 27 percent), guns (47-35) and climate (54 percent to 19 percent, with the remainder of respondents crumpling up the poll and either composting or burning it, in equal shares).
So all in all, things seem to be looking up for Harris on several key issues, although the close results on the economy still suggest that America’s poll respondents need some remedial education, the end.
[AP / AP-NORC Poll
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