There’s one crucial question that has decided many of America’s presidential elections, and it bodes ill for Kamala Harris.
By a 16-point margin, most voters answer “no” to a question famously asked by Ronald Reagan in 1980: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that only 40% of Likely U.S. Voters say they are better off than they were four years ago, while 56% say they’re not better off. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
The Gallup Organization also found that three separate measures of party performance on issues favor the Republican Party by at least a modest margin.
By 46% to 41%, Americans say the Republican Party is better able than the Democratic Party to address what they think is the most important problem facing the country. The top issues Americans currently name as the most important are ones that tend to favor the GOP, including the economy (24%), immigration (22%), the government (17%) and inflation (15%).
This measure has been highly predictive of election outcomes in Gallup trends dating back to 1948.
A recent Pew Research survey of voters asking which issues were most important to their vote also found results that were similarly bad for Harris with 81% of all voters listing the economy as "very important" to their vote. Interestingly, only 69% of Harris supporters listed the economy as “very important,” while 93% of Trump voters said the economy was very important to their vote.
In more good news for President Trump, Rasmussen found Republicans more trusted than Democrats on the question of which political party voters trust more to handle the economy, 51% say Republicans and 41% say Democrats.
Among voters who say they’re not better off than they were four years ago, 80% trust Republicans more to handle immigration and 79% trust Republicans more to handle the economy.
While 66% of Democrats say they’re better off than they were four years ago, that opinion is shared by only 10% of Republicans and 29% of voters not affiliated with either major party. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Republicans, 51% of unaffiliated voters and 28% of Democrats say they’re not better off.
On the question of which party is most trusted to handle the economy, 88% of Republicans trust the GOP more and 83% of Democrats trust their own party more. Among unaffiliated voters, 51% trust Republicans more, while 29% trust Democrats more and 20% are undecided.
Fifty-seven percent (57%) of whites, 42% of black voters, 55% of Hispanics and 63% of other minorities say they are not better off than they were four years ago.
Older voters are more likely to trust Republicans to handle the economy, Voters ages 40-64 are most likely to say they are not better off than they were four years ago.
A September YouGov poll likewise older respondents painting a bleaker picture of their finances than younger respondents. One-quarter of 18-25-year-olds said they were better off, compared to 12% of those 65 and older. And in contrast, 16% of 18-29-year-olds said they were worse off, while 36% of those 65 and older said the same.
Breaking down the electorate by income categories, voters earning more than $100,000 are most likely to trust Democrats to handle the economy. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of voters in the top bracket – with annual incomes over $200,000 – say they’re better off than they were four years ago, but more than 60% of those earning less than $50,000 a year say they’re not better off.
Among voters who say America is on the wrong track, 73% trust Republicans more to handle the economy, while among those think the country is headed in the right direction, 85% trust Democrats more on the economy.
On the crucial question of immigration Rasmussen found 53% trust Republicans more to handle immigration while 38% trust Democrats more on the issue, and 10% are not sure.
On the question of which party is most trusted to handle immigration, Republicans (90%) are significantly more likely than Democrats (79%) to trust their own party more, and unaffiliated voters favor the GOP by 56% to 25% margin.
Women voters are significantly more likely than men to trust Democrats on both the economy and immigration, but majorities of both men and women voters say they’re not better off than they were four years ago.
Black voters are most likely to trust Democrats more to handle the economy and immigration, however voters of all ages trust the GOP more on the immigration issue.
The survey of 1,050 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on October 1-3, 2024 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
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