A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday finds that Donald Trump’s lead over Kamala Harris on the economy has nearly vanished, which could make her recently announced economic plan—touted across three new ads—all the more potent.
The economy is always at or near the top of voters’ list of concerns, and this new poll is no different, finding that 26% of registered voters put the economy as their top issue, compared with 22% who said political extremism and threats to democracy, and 13% who chose immigration. On the economy, Harris trails Trump by just 3 percentage points, 40% to 43%, which is within margin of error. In July, the same poll gave Trump an 11-point lead on the issue.
It is just one poll, but it suggests serious movement on the issue. That means Harris is on the right track, especially when it comes to one of her main talking points: greedflation. Her economic plan includes going after companies that price gouge in times of economic crisis, like global pandemics.
A new battleground poll from GQR for More Perfect Union, shared with The American Prospect, shows that likely voters really want to hit corporate greed. The economy is a top issue for these voters, with 56% saying groceries are the most difficult basic need to afford, followed by 51% for health care and 48% for gas prices.
While voters knew about President Joe Biden’s and Harris’ efforts to lower the cost of insulin and some prescription drugs, “[n]ot even a third of voters know the government is already trying to ban noncompetes, crack down on junk fees by airlines and banks, break up Ticketmaster and Big Tech, or even make it easier to join a union,” The American prospect writes.
That’s a story the Harris campaign can tell while she keeps hitting corporate greed and her plans to clamp down it. Here’s The American Prospect on the poll:
The most notable finding is that when provided with a set of options, 61 percent of the polling respondents, including two-thirds of Democrats and 63 percent of independents, selected corporate greed as the main cause for rising costs they’re experiencing. The second-highest is government spending at 51 percent—an explanation certainly favored by Republicans—and behind that is the pandemic supply chain crunch at 46 percent.
That’s not a new perception in the public. A Navigator Research survey from this past May had similar findings, and they also agreed on a solution: government action to crack down on inflation on key items, as Harris is proposing.
She’s getting an unwitting assist in that argument this week. The Federal Trade Commission and a collection of states are suing to block grocery chain Kroger from merging with Albertsons, another huge chain. Kroger’s top executive for setting prices testified Wednesday that his company hiked prices on milk and eggs more than needed to account for inflation.
The next Harris ad practically writes itself.
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