Sun Belt poll: Trump’s policies helped, while Harris’s would hurt

It’s good news for Trump, who needs victories in the Sun Belt to give him the chance to move on to a victory in the Rust Belt — Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin — that would win a second term in the White House. But beyond the horse-race number, the poll included two questions that yielded revealing results.

The questions were: “Do you think Donald Trump’s policies have helped people like you, hurt people like you, or haven’t made much of a difference either way?” and “Do you think Kamala Harris’s policies would help people like you, hurt people like you, or wouldn’t make much of a difference either way?”

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In Arizona, 46% of those surveyed said Trump’s policies have helped them, while 34% said his policies have hurt them — a 12-point positive margin for Trump. In Georgia, it was 43% helped to 30% hurt — a 13-point positive margin. And in North Carolina, it was 46% helped to 37% hurt — a 9-point positive margin.

That’s a pretty favorable result for Trump, who is running with an advantage not seen in a presidential election in living memory: He has been president of the United States before, and people can compare what he did with what the incumbent, in this case Harris, has done.

Harris’s numbers aren’t so good. In Arizona, 36% said Harris’s policies would help them, while 43% said her policies would hurt them — a 7-point negative margin. In Georgia, it was 39% help to 43% hurt — a 4-point negative margin. And in North Carolina, it was 37% help to 41% hurt — another 4-point negative margin.

The breakdown of the numbers goes along pretty predictable lines. Taking all three states together, people without bachelor’s degrees very strongly felt Trump’s policies helped them and Harris’s policies would hurt them. People with college degrees, a significantly smaller group, felt the opposite by narrower margins. Opinion also broke down on racial lines, urban-suburban-rural lines, and age lines. And then along political lines — among independents, 43% said Trump’s policies helped them, while 30% said Trump’s policies hurt them. On the other side, 42% of independents said Harris’s policies would hurt them, while 30% said they would help.

Notice the slight difference in wording between the two questions: Trump’s policies “have helped,” while Harris’s policies “would help.” Trump was president; we know what he did. Obviously Harris has never been president, but as the incumbent vice president, she is the incumbent in the race. And the record of President Joe Biden, who was pushed out of the campaign by a secretive group of Democratic powerbrokers in favor of Harris, is her record too. She is trying to run as a new face not answerable for the Biden-Harris administration’s actions in the last four years, but that is simply not possible.

So the practical meaning of the poll question is: “Were the Trump years better for you or were the Biden-Harris years better for you?” It’s one of the many questions Harris herself does not want to address. But if the new survey is correct, voters in some swing states have already made up their minds.