In every presidential election since 1952, the party shown in Gallup polls to be better trusted to handle the nation’s top one to two issues ultimately won. The stunning accuracy of this indicator points us to one key question: Which issues will define this November’s election outcome?
Gallup polls tell us that this election season, the potentially decisive topics are the economy and immigration. Currently, voters express higher confidence in the Republican party to govern in these areas: 46% trust the GOP, compared to 41% who trust Democrats more. However, other key priorities include health care, abortion, and civil rights — areas in which the Democrats tend to garner more trust.
Breakdown of Key Issues:
Although the economy and immigration appear to be at the forefront of voters’ minds, priorities differ vastly among voting groups. In a poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov, Hispanic individuals appeared to be outliers in their issue priorities, deemphasizing financial matters while highlighting climate change and health care as top issues. For Black Americans, however, this trend was reversed, with economic concerns mentioned most frequently and the environment and health care less so. Although groups consistently denoted foreign policy as important, it was rarely given preference over other issues and does not seem to be a decisive factor overall.
Unsurprisingly, those making more than $100,000 a year were far less likely to point to inflation and rising prices as holding the most weight in their decisions. Merely 18% of individuals in this income bracket named these financial issues as their leading concern, compared to 23% overall and 26% of those making less than $50k. Regarding the importance of employment opportunities, the distribution by age group was similarly predictable: those over 65 sharply deprioritized this matter, and individuals from 30-44 were most worried about jobs compared to other age groups. Also expectedly, the 18-29 age group demonstrated significantly greater environmental consideration, with 13% identifying it as their principal concern while only 7% of total survey respondents and just 4% of those aged 45-64 shared that same priority.
The economy has retained its relevance since last election cycle, with 79% of U.S. adults categorizing it as “very important” to them both in 2020 and this year. The issue which changed the most in salience compared to 2020 is abortion, rising from 40% of adults ranking it as “very important” to 47%. Immigration, and health care also saw slight increases in salience.
Sorting voter priorities by party identification offers insights into their motivations. The top issues of the economy and immigration were far more heavily emphasized by supporters of former president Trump than they were by those voting for Vice President Harris. The proportion of those indicating climate change, abortion, healthcare, or civil rights as their utmost priority, on the other hand, was greater among Harris supporters. These results indicate wide-ranging divergences in the needs and beliefs of Harris and Trump voters.
Key Issue Analysis:
Evidently, the economy is consistently ranked as the top issue in this election cycle. Trump leads Harris by 10 percentage points in terms of voter trust on economic issues. However, Harris does poll better than Biden, who trailed Trump by 14 percentage points in this area. While the current top economic concerns among voters include item and produce costs as well as housing prices and employment opportunities, public views on the economy tend to shift rapidly, potentially yielding fluctuations in trust in either candidate on this issue.
Immigration constitutes the top issue after economic matters, yet there is wide variation between liberal and conservative voters regarding this issue. Indeed, over six in 10 Trump supporters are in favor of a federal initiative to deport all undocumented immigrants from the U.S.; likewise, a Scripps News and Ipsos poll found that 54% of those surveyed, including one in four Democrats and all but 14% of Republicans, were proponents of mass deportation efforts. Although a higher proportion of individuals in that survey maintained positive views of Harris, confidence in Trump was 10 percentage points higher than Harris.
An issue that has played a considerably larger role in this election than it has for several decades is abortion. Following the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, the debate around abortion was amplified on the national stage, leading to a sharp jump in the percentage of individuals who identified it as a matter of great importance to them. Specifically, among Democrats, that proportion grew from 35% to 67%, but decreased from 46% to 35% for Republicans. Furthermore, the share of voters reporting confidence in the Democratic candidate’s abortion policy increased by 7% after Biden withdrew from the race, giving Harris an overall edge of 11 percentage points over Trump on this issue. However, as of May, just 34% of voters indicated that they would “only vote for a candidate who shares your views on abortion,” challenging notions around whether this issue could be decisive in the election result as a whole.
Concerningly, only 10% of voters are unworried about the strength of American democracy in this election cycle. In polls from the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, “the state of democracy” was consistently cited as a primary factor in swaying voters’ presidential candidate choice. Although this issue may feel more abstract to voters compared to financial troubles, immigration, or abortion, its repercussions may have tangible impacts on a scope far beyond the here and now.
While these data tell a complex story of the needs and hopes of various groups across the country, whether the current key issues around inflation, employment, and immigration will ultimately serve as deciding factors in this election is difficult to decipher. Although historic trends may point to the decisive worth of dominating the top issue of an election cycle — which Trump currently does — Harris’s lead in several other pertinent and indispensable areas cannot be overlooked. Ultimately, it is critical that candidates make it their priority to understand voter priorities and perspectives in order to best fulfill their public service to those who put them in office: the people.
