Despite Pennsylvanians consistently listing inflation as one of the top issues in the 2024 election, polls show Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. either tied or leading Republicans Donald Trump and Dave McCormick.
It’s a conundrum for pollsters and political strategists.
“It makes no sense whatsoever. None,” longtime Pennsylvania Democrat political strategist Neil Oxman of The Campaign Group told DVJournal.
After Biden took office and Democrats pushed through trillions in new government spending, inflation soared from 1.4 percent to above 9 percent — the highest increase in prices since the end of the Carter-era inflation of the 1970s.
Oxman suggested polling reflects the inconvenient truth that Trump’s personality turns off certain voters particularly when he starts making personal attacks.
Polling results appear to confirm his theory.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Aug. 14 showed 60 percent of those surveyed did not believe Trump was honest. That’s compared to 48 percent for Harris. More than half of those who responded to an Emerson College poll released Thursday viewed Trump unfavorably. Harris scored just below 49 percent. Similar results came from a Siena College/New York Times poll released Aug. 10 with 51 percent viewing Trump unfavorably while 48 percent disliked Harris.
The good news for Trump is people are still learning about Harris. Pennsylvania Republican strategist Vince Galko of Mercury LLC compared the vice president to a generic candidate with an ‘Anybody but Trump’ moniker.
“Republicans need to do a better job in the closing two months of really defining her and what she stands for, what her record is, what her plans are,” he told DVJournal. “They have to put an identity to the name.”
But Harris may have a Pennsylvania problem, as pointed out by data analyst Nate Silver. While the Siena/New York Times and Quinnipiac polls gave her a slight lead over Trump, those polls were taken before the Democratic convention. Polls taken after the convention have Trump leading or tied with Harris.
Silver suggested Harris should be polling higher than Trump right now and called her an underdog in Pennsylvania for November.
It’s a murkier path for McCormick in the Senate race.
While he’s received praise from both sides for ads that linked Casey to some of Harris’s more extreme positions on energy and meat consumption, he’s never led in the polls.
Part of that is due to the Casey family political legacy that dates back to 1963.
Oxman pointed out there haven’t been a lot of years when a Casey hasn’t been on the ballot in Pennsylvania. He suggested McCormick would have done a better job if he were running for an open U.S. Senate seat against an unknown Democrat.
“This race is standing on its own simply because Casey is enough of a brand to stand on his own in the state,” said Oxman.
McCormick has tried to chip away at Casey’s lead. He recently launched Bobflation.com, a website highlighting inflation-related price hikes on items like beer at Phillies games or Hershey Park tickets compared to 2019. The site ties rising inflation to Casey’s voting record during the Biden-Harris administration. FiveThirtyEight said Casey voted 99 percent of the time for Biden’s agenda last year.
Galko hoped McCormick would continue to localize price hikes for the average voter.
“He needs to highlight that the Biden-Harris-Casey policies have stymied the production of energy in Pennsylvania, getting natural gas to the market, overtaxing the industry. … He needs to start talking about it in local terms instead of broad strokes,” he said.
McCormick also received help from PolitiFact which gave a “Mostly False” ranking to Casey’s claim that rising prices were caused by so-called “greedflation” where corporations colluded to hike prices for profit.
RealClearPolitics puts Casey’s average lead at 6.5 percent. More recent polls showed the race tightening a bit with McCormick a point or two out of the margin of error.
The pair are expected to debate on Oct. 3 in Harrisburg.
