Trump economy worries rise ahead of midterms as Harris poll shows Republican pessimism climbing
A Harris poll for the Guardian conducted in early October 2026 finds 38% of Republicans believe the economy is worsening, up from 29% a year ago, with the midterm elections about three weeks away. Overall, 58% of average US voters see the economy deteriorating.
Trump economy worries rise ahead of midterms as Harris poll shows Republican pessimism climbing
Republican confidence in the economy is sliding again just as the trump economy midterms test approaches. In Harris polling conducted earlier in October 2026 for the Guardian, 38% of Republicans said the economy is getting worse, up from 29% a year ago. Across average US voters, 58% think the economy is deteriorating, 10 percentage points more than in the last poll of the Biden era.
Pessimism swings with the White House
Partisan views of the same economy have flipped with the occupant of the White House, even though the underlying indicators barely moved.
- In September 2024, in the waning weeks of Joe Biden's presidency, 65% of Republicans believed the economy was getting worse.
- About six months later, after Donald Trump launched a trade war with his 'liberation day' tariffs, the share of Republican pessimists had fallen to 33%.
- Between those two polls, annual consumer price inflation fell from 2.4% to 2.3% and unemployment ticked up from 4.1% to 4.2%.
- Democrats moved the other way: the share who thought the economy was worsening jumped from 28% in the last Biden-era Harris poll to 73% in the first conducted under Trump.
The pattern is now repeating in reverse. Republican pessimism has climbed from 29% to 38% over the past year, and the latest polling was carried out before the September consumer price index reading, which recorded annual inflation spiking to 3.7%, had been published.
Rural and core Republican groups sour
The groups that form core Republican support are turning markedly more negative. Rural Americans are the most downbeat of all: 64% of those polled this month said the economy is getting worse, against 52% of city dwellers. That is 6 percentage points higher than in September 2024, during the last poll of the Biden administration.
Other pillars of the Republican coalition show the same drift:
- 61% of white Americans believe the economy is getting worse, up from 48% in September 2024.
- The share of men who think the economy is worsening rose from 46% to 52% over the two years.
The report links rural hardship to several pressures. Rural producers have been largely shut out of China's markets by the trade war, and have been hammered by rising diesel and fertilizer prices, which the author ties to Trump's war in Iran. Rural labor forces have also been affected by Trump's immigration raids, and the president sought to tame beef prices by lowering tariffs on imported meat.
It's the economy, stupid.
That phrase carried Bill Clinton to the presidency in 1992, but the political science behind it may no longer hold in a polarized America.
What polarization means for policy
A study by political scientists from Stanford and New York University found that partisan gaps in economic perceptions grew from about 20 percentage points at the start of the Bush II administration to a maximum of 73 percentage points during Trump's first administration.
Researchers at Bucknell University and Texas A&M University argue that polarization reduces policymakers' incentive to tailor policy to deliver broad economic prosperity. In their view, officials might instead aim policy to deliver rewards to co-partisans, donors, or even to the office-holder himself or herself - without endangering re-election.
Three weeks to the midterms
The timing sharpens the picture. The September reading of the consumer price index, recording annual inflation at 3.7%, came out only after Harris had finished its polling. Opposition to Trump's economic stewardship, the report says, has built up over the 21 months since the 'liberation day' tariffs, and the midterm elections are now roughly three weeks away.
