Bad news for Trump ahead of the midterms: it’s still the economy, stupid
I keep coming back to that poll number: 65% of Republicans thought the economy was getting worse in September 2024, then six months later, with Trump's trade war in full swing, that number apparently flipped. That's a partisan shift that reveals economic perception now lags behind political loyalty. People are telling pollsters what they think they should believe, not what they're actually experiencing at the grocery store. That makes the whole "it's the economy, stupid" rule feel less like a law of politics and more like a Rorschach test.
What I'd want to know next is how this plays out in swing districts where the cost of eggs and gas is more real than any tweet. The polarization might be muting the effect, but it's not erasing it—if it were, we wouldn't see these numbers moving. The real story here might be that voters are becoming more sophisticated about separating their identity from their pocketbook, or maybe they're just more confused. I lean toward the latter, but the midterms will tell us which one is true. Either way, the economy is still the ghost in the machine, and it's not done haunting us yet.