The data from Paul Krugman.
. And as G. Elliott Morris notes, in 2024 voters who said that the economy was their most important issue favored Trump by 63 points over Kamala Harris.
This worm has, however, turned with astonishing speed. In last week’s gubernatorial elections, economy-focused voters favored Democrats by almost 30 points — a 90-point swing. Voters appear to have decided that Trump’s campaign promises to bring prices down were fraudulent, and punished his party accordingly.
Trump could respond to voters’ harsh verdict on his economic policies by citing real economic numbers, which aren’t all bad. He could acknowledge that there are problems but promise that prosperity is just around the corner. He could even change course, trying to address real concerns about affordability.
That is, he could do these things if he were a completely different person. What he’s doing instead, being who he is, is trying to gaslight America, claiming that everything is wonderful.
I won’t try to go through the full list of Trump’s economic lies. Daniel Dale has a fairly comprehensive run-through at CNN. Let me just take one example, gas prices, which Trump says are at their lowest level in two decades and close to $2 a gallon. That’s not what official data say, but Trump has a habit of insisting that government numbers he doesn’t like are fake and politically motivated — he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics over a weak jobs report. As it happens, however, several private organizations independently track gasoline prices to help drivers find the best deals. And they show gas above $3 a gallon and nowhere near a record low. Here, for example, is Gasbuddy.com:
Still, Trump has lied a lot over time, and in general it has worked for him. Will this time be different?
Yes. Voters do sometimes believe lies, but not the kind of lies Trump is telling.
Voters can sometimes be convinced, falsely, that bad things are happening to other people, even when they themselves are doing OK. Many Americans who don’t live in Chicago probably believe administration claims that the city, which just had its safest summer since the 1960s, is a war zone.
But telling people that things are great when their personal experience says otherwise is different. Are violent mobs overrunning Portland? If you watch Fox News, you might believe that. Are groceries “way down,” as Trump keeps insisting? Anyone who does their own food shopping — even Republicans — knows that this isn’t true. Reupping a chart from yesterday’s post:
So, why have voters turned so negative, so quickly, on Trump’s management of the economy? Objectively, the economy is worse in some important respects than it was last year. We haven’t seen mass layoffs (yet?), but finding jobs has gotten much harder. Here’s the “labor market differential,” the difference between the percentage of people saying jobs are plentiful and those saying they’re hard to get:
Source: Conference Board via Haver Analytics
Furthermore, we’re experiencing “K-shaped” economic growth, with those at the top doing well but those further down losing ground. Many people on both the left and the right claimed that this was happening under Biden, but the truth was the opposite: Under Biden, wages at the bottom consistently rose faster than wages at the top. This year, however, that pattern has been reversed:
Source: Atlanta Fed
As that left-wing rag the Wall Street Journal points out, the only people who seem to be feeling good about the economy right now are those who own a lot of stock.
But I believe that the turn against Trump is also in large part a backlash against his attempts to gaslight the public about the true state of the economy. Once again, these attempts aren’t about putting a positive spin on the data. They’re just flat-out lies.
And Democrats should hammer those lies as proof not just that Trump is utterly dishonest, but that he’s completely out of touch with the reality of American life.