Welcome to our inaugural weekly audio digest from the team here at the NewWorld Election Report. This week, Andre reflects on the Harris’s Pittsburgh speech on the economy and what she needs to do to mobilize her base on an issue that is one of her vulnerabilities in the battle against Trump.
Read the full NewWorld Election Report issue below.
So many voters are in a desperate struggle to make ends meet. They find themselves stuck in an economy where they can’t get ahead, and they believe Joe Biden (and by association, Kamala Harris) has trapped them there. The depths of that economic reality, the brutal limitations it places on all other ambitions, is so acute that they feel they must vote for a change - any change. Even if that means electing Donald Trump, a candidate they don’t particularly like and have already fired once because they believe he is incompetent at most parts of the job he’s applying for.
Harris isn’t convincing enough people that she can help them economically. While 68% of Black women and 58% of Black men believe a Harris presidency would make their lives better, only 51% of Hispanic women, 42% of Hispanic men, 48% of AAPI women and 46% of AAPI men feel the same.
That’s the state of the race. And the team at Harris headquarters seems to know it. Yesterday at the Pittsburgh Press Club, the Vice President laid out her most detailed proposal to date on how a Harris administration will address the painful economic realities Americans are facing every day. The good news: they know that this is a hill to die on – the hill to die on, in fact. Her speech, though still anchored in the opaque themes of an “opportunity economy” and “new way forward”, did go farther to cast her as a practical problem-solver, ready to stand up for unions and clear the path for business to thrive and the economy to deliver for working people. But did it go far enough?
Belief in Harris’s economic competency only slightly edges out Trump. Altogether BIPOC voters without a college degree give her only a 18 point edge on handling inflation. Her advantage is even smaller with Hispanic women (+13 Harris), AAPI men (+5 Harris), and AAPI women (+16 Harris). Hispanic Men actually prefer Trump on the issue (+7).
To win this election, Kamala Harris needs more than a sensible economic policy platform; she needs a closing argument on the economy that rallies voters of color in her base across the rust belt and sun belt - voters who say the economy and fighting for the middle class are their top concerns and whose votes are likely to be decisive.
“Economic Freedom” is the message that we need.
It turns out there is a powerful economic message that unites diverse groups of voters of color under a narrative that includes progressive, populist economic policies. And the campaign needs to start trying it, like-yesterday. That’s according to our most recent tracking poll.
An opinion piece in the Times earlier this month encouraged Harris to hang her economic messaging on the notion of freedom (a theme she is leveraging successfully elsewhere) to show voters she understands the economy isn’t just about gas pumps and groceries - it’s about having enough financial freedom to make choices and realize dreams big and small. We decided to put it to the test.
Economic Freedom: A New Path with Potential
We crafted a new core message based around this idea of “Economic Freedom” – and it beat every other core Harris message across Black, Hispanic, and AAPI voters.
We asked respondents to rank prominent Harris messages1 using a method called MaxDiff2 as seen below with brief descriptions:
Economic Freedom
The Harris presidency will fight for economic freedom
Patriotism - National Security
The Harris presidency will continue to protect our interests abroad
Freedom - Core Message
The Harris presidency will fight for the freedoms of bodily autonomy, gun safety, and environment
Forward Together
The Harris presidency will promise to heal America’s political divisions
President for all Americans
The Harris presidency will work for the benefit of every American, regardless of party
The “economic freedom” message was the top performer, edging out the Harris campaign’s core messages:
“As President, I will fight everyday for your economic freedom. The freedom to live a good life, to plan for the future, to control your destiny, and not have to struggle to get by. True freedom depends on economic freedom.”
As you can see here - while other messages had success with some groups, only “Economic Freedom” was universally resonant - uniting groups that our tracking poll have shown to disagree on everything from economic policy and immigration to VP Harris’s competence and allegiances.
Additionally we tested all of Harris’s main economic talking and policy points, and a “Price-Gouging” ban proves to be the most promising specific policy framing.
Notably this message is not only about a positive outcome, it explicitly points a finger at a specific problem, caused by specific actors (in this case corporate leaders raising prices for no reason other than padding their margins). By giving voters someone to blame for high prices other than the current administration, messages around price gouging help remind voters that there are many actors who have direct power over their pocketbooks. In this case, taking the fight from Pennsylvania Avenue to Wall Street.
Summary: The three ways political communicators can leverage these insights to mobilize BIPOC voters.
Give “Economic Freedom” a central role in framing your economic policy messages.
Put the emphasis on financial agency as the key goal and “the freedom to control your destiny” as the primary solution.Make the Price Gouge ban an answer to the immediate needs of voters.
Leverage the price-gouging ban as a primary proof-point of how we can fight corporate power on behalf of working and middle class voters.Exploit don’t squander her “Competency Edge”
Although her advantage on the economy and inflation is slight amongst our non-college voters of color, Harris is and should continue to draw contrasts around Trump’s championing of the “skyscraper elites”.
Let us know what you think of the Harris’s message on the economy below, and we’ll be back soon to dive deeper into how to win over voters of color 6 weeks out from election day.
1 We’ve included the full copy of our tested “Core Harris” messages below.
[Economic - Freedom] : “As President, I will fight everyday for your economic freedom. The freedom to live a good life, to plan for the future, to control your destiny, and not have to struggle to get by. True freedom depends on economic freedom.”
[Military - National Security]: As Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure we always have the strongest fighting force in the world. I will fulfill our sacred obligation to our troops and their families. And I will always honor, and never disparage, their service and their sacrifice.
[Freedom - Core Message ]: As President, I will fight for the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body. The freedom from gun violence and pollution. And the freedom that unlocks all the others. The freedom to vote.”
[Forward Together] “With this election, we have a precious opportunity to move past the bitterness and division. Not as members of any one party or faction. But as Americans. I promise to be a President for all Americans.”
[President of ALL America] I will not be President of “blue” or “red” America, but of ALL America. I will remind our political leaders what most Americans already know. That so much more unites us than divides us, and our greatest days are yet to come.
2 A statistical technique that creates a robust ranking of different items, based on theories of mathematical psychology. We ask respondents to rank messages multiple times in a way that reveals their preferences with considerable precision.
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