With six weeks to go until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris is set to make another economic pitch to voters, aiming to improve her standing on an issue where public perception still favors former President Donald Trump.
Harris told reporters yesterday that she’ll give a speech this week “to outline my vision for the economy.” Her proposals this week will “aim to help Americans build wealth and set economic incentives for businesses to aid that goal,” Reuters reports. But don’t expect a slew of specifics: “The address will be more sweeping in tone rather than focused on any proposal or set of policy items,” Bloomberg says, citing an unnamed source familiar with Harris’s plans.
Since launching her campaign in late July, she has pledged to lower costs, provide tax breaks for childcare, build more housing, raise the corporate tax rate and offer financial support to small businesses.
“I’ve named it an opportunity economy,” she told reporters yesterday, adding that her plan “is about what we can do more to invest in the aspirations, the ambitions and the dreams of the American people while addressing the challenges that they face, whether it be the high price of groceries or the difficulty in being able to acquire home ownership for a number of reasons, including we don’t have enough houses to buy.”
Harris’s focus on the economy comes as some undecided voters continue to say they want to hear more about how she would steer the economy — and as Democratic strategists debate whether she would benefit from laying out more policy details.
Harris has surged to a slight lead over former Trump in national polls. She’s up by 5 percentage points in the new NBC News poll and by 4 points in the latest from CBS News/YouGov. Harris appears to be slightly ahead in four of the seven battlegrounds, including the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. New polls from The New York Times and Siena College show Trump has a considerable edge in Arizona and also leads in Georgia and North Carolina.
But the race remains incredibly close, and Harris continues to lag in some polls on the question of which candidate voters trust more on the economy — though she has closed the gap considerably compared to where President Joe Biden had been.
The NBC poll found that more voters say Trump would be better than Harris at handling the economy, 50% to 41%, and better at dealing with inflation and the cost of living, 48% to 40%. Those margins, while still large, are much narrower than the 22-point advantage Trump had on the same questions in NBC polls earlier this year. And the latest FT-Michigan Ross poll showed Harris leading Trump on the question of stewardship of the economy, 44% to 42%.
The CBS News/YouGov poll found that 88% of registered voters say the economy will be a major factor in their vote, and 59% called the economy fairly bad or very bad, compared with 39% who said it is fairly good or very good. Still, that was a slight improvement from August, when the split was 62-35.
Nearly 90% of likely voters who say the economy is good prefer Harris over Trump, and the vice president has closed the gap among likely voters who are emphasizing the economy. Trump led with those voters, 56% to 43%, in August, but his edge has now shrunk to six points, 53% to 47%.
Trump to talk taxes: The former president is scheduled to give a speech in Savannah, Georgia, tomorrow “outlining his plan to lower taxes for American business owners and highlight the importance of buying American made goods for our economy.”
