Opinion | What the Polls Say About Harris Erasing Trump’s Lead on the Economy

One thing has been true about the presidential election polling for many months now, regardless of who was up or down in the horse race: Donald Trump has been favored on the issue of the economy, and the economy has ranked as voters’ most important issue. Whatever other obstacles Mr. Trump and his campaign have faced, more voters have tended to trust him with the economy than the Biden-Harris ticket.

According to at least one poll, though, voters’ attitudes may have changed. In a new survey conducted for The Financial Times, by a single point, Vice President Kamala Harris edges out Mr. Trump on the question of who voters trust more to handle the economy.

This result is a perfect example of when the trend line, not the data point itself, tells the most interesting story. In isolation, voters being essentially evenly split on anything isn’t particularly surprising. The race for the White House is, at this point, very likely to be a close one, and seeing voters divide into their respective camps is what you’d expect.

But Ms. Harris’s slight edge on the economy in that Financial Times poll exists in the context of the numbers that came before it. To see the shift from Mr. Trump winning on the top issue to it being a jump ball will be an eye-opening finding if it is replicated in other polls.

To be clear, this isn’t necessarily because voters have started feeling a whole lot better about the state of things economically. The FT poll shows a fairly consistent majority of Americans reporting that when it comes to their own financial situation, they’re “surviving” rather than “thriving.” Almost three-quarters of respondents say they have a negative view of the overall condition of the economy, and half say they are worse off than they were before President Biden took office.

Rather, the poll suggests that Mr. Trump and Republicans don’t seem to have succeeded yet in connecting Ms. Harris to Mr. Biden’s economic policies. If they’re able to do so, it will be a significant challenge for Ms. Harris; more than six in 10 voters in the same poll say that if she’s elected, Ms. Harris should either “make major changes” or “take a completely different approach” from Mr. Biden.