Harris poll finds Republican pessimism on economy rising ahead of midterms

Rural Americans report economy worsening at higher rate than city dwellers

A Harris poll conducted for the Guardian, published October 15, 2026, found that 38 percent of Republicans now believe the US economy is getting worse — up from 29 percent a year earlier. The finding suggests pessimism is growing even among President Donald Trump’s core supporters three weeks before the November midterm elections, according to the Guardian.

The shift represents a partial reversal of an earlier pattern. In September 2024, in the final weeks of President Joe Biden’s term, 65 percent of Republicans told Harris pollsters the economy was getting worse. About six months later, after Trump launched tariffs he described as “liberation day,” the share of Republican pessimists had dropped to 33 percent.

The Guardian reported that the underlying economic data did not change dramatically in ways that would explain that initial shift. Annual consumer price inflation fell from 2.4 percent to 2.3 percent between the two surveys, and the unemployment rate — which stood at 4.2 percent as of mid-October 2026 according to Federal Reserve data — ticked up from 4.1 percent a year earlier.

Democrats moved sharply in the opposite direction over the same period. From the last Harris poll of the Biden era to the first under Trump, the share of Democrats who said the US economy was worsening jumped from 28 percent to 73 percent, the Guardian reported.

The September reading of the consumer price index, which the Guardian reported recorded a spike in annual inflation to 3.7 percent, had not yet been published when Harris conducted its latest round of polling earlier this month, the pollster noted. That release could further shift voter perceptions in the final weeks before the election.

In the latest poll, pessimism is most pronounced among demographic groups that have historically formed the Republican base. Sixty-four percent of rural Americans polled this month said the economy was getting worse, compared to 52 percent of city dwellers — a 6-point increase in rural pessimism since September 2024. Sixty-one percent of white Americans now believe the economy is getting worse, up from 48 percent in September 2024, and the share of men who believe the economy is worsening rose from 46 percent to 52 percent over the same period.

The Guardian’s underlying analysis, written by economic-policy columnist Eduardo Porter, framed the findings in a longer-running argument about polarization. Porter wrote that “it’s indisputable that the political polarization of our time has reduced (and confused) the influence of economic conditions on US elections.” He cited Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign — “It’s the economy, stupid” — to illustrate that for much of the 20th century, economic conditions were decisive in presidential and congressional elections, with voters blaming or rewarding incumbents for the state of the economy. Porter wrote that this relationship “has weakened dramatically as the electorate has set on divergent ideological paths, ultimately splitting into rival camps with diametrically opposed perceptions of reality.”

Academic researchers have documented the perception gap over longer time horizons. Political scientists at Stanford University and New York University found, as reported by the Guardian, that “the economic perceptions of Democrats and Republicans have polarized relative to Independents and that this polarization is not asymmetric in magnitude.” They estimated the partisan gap rose “from about 20 percentage points at the beginning of the Bush II administration to a maximum of 73 percentage points during the (first) Trump administration.”

A separate study by political scientists at Bucknell University and Texas A&M University argued that this polarization has consequences for governance. “If voters are relatively unwilling to cross party lines to reward good economic performance or punish economic decline, then elected officials can pursue policies that distribute economic benefits narrowly without affecting their chances of re-election,” the researchers wrote, according to the Guardian. “This might include aiming policy to deliver rewards to co-partisans, donors, or even to the office-holder himself or herself.”

Porter’s analysis described the Trump administration’s political tactics as including branding Democrats as “apologists of Vladimir Lenin” and claiming that they “want to change the sex of young children,” and reported that Trump “seems to believe that he can sway the electorate by doing violence to groups that his Maga base dislikes, like immigrants and the ‘undeserving’ poor.” Porter wrote that Trump and his allies hope this approach — and Trump’s assertion that “we’re growing at a faster rate than we’ve ever grown before” — can prevent an “electoral bloodbath” in November by making voters pay less attention to “the cost of living, and to the Trump family’s self-dealing.”

The Guardian reported that rural Americans have been affected by specific Trump administration policies, including the trade war that has largely barred them from Chinese markets, rising diesel and fertilizer prices the Guardian linked to Trump’s war in Iran, immigration enforcement actions affecting their labor force, and the administration’s reduction of tariffs on imported meat aimed at lowering beef prices.

The broader national picture shows deepening concern, the Guardian reported. Fifty-eight percent of US voters believe the economy is getting worse — a 10-point increase from the final poll of the Biden era. Porter wrote that “it seems too late” for the Trump administration to redirect voters’ attention, that “voters’ opposition to Trump’s economic stewardship is too well established” to be reversed by “shots at distracting the base,” and that this opposition has “built up since the ‘liberation day’ tariffs through countless destructive decisions over the last 21 months.”