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Two-thirds of Republican voters say they trust Donald Trump more than any other Republican presidential candidate to lead the U.S. economy. That's according to an FT-Michigan Ross poll that underscores his dominance on bread-and-butter issues a week before the primary season ends.
The results are particularly problematic for Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who has emerged in the polls as the biggest threat to the former president.
Only 8 percent of Republican voters said she was their choice to lead the U.S. economy, while 67 percent chose Trump. Nine percent of respondents chose Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose faltering campaign in some early voting states was overtaken by Haley.
The Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses will kick off the primary process in which Republican voters will select their party's candidate for the White House in 2024. The New Hampshire primary will follow a week later.
The Financial Times economic survey reflects Trump's dominant lead among Republicans in states still in early primaries. There he enjoys the support of about half of caucus-goers in Iowa and 44 percent of GOP voters in New Hampshire. DeSantis is in second place in Iowa with 18.4 percent, while Haley is second in New Hampshire with 25.7 percent.
On the campaign trail, Trump touted the strength of the U.S. economy while in the White House and insisted the “next economic boom” would begin “the moment” he is elected president in November.
Haley, a former U.N. ambassador who has relied heavily on her foreign policy credentials, has sold herself as a fiscal conservative and blamed billions of dollars in federal spending by the Trump and Biden administrations for inflation. DeSantis has promised to cut taxes if elected and has proposed a uniform federal income tax for all Americans.
But given Trump's overwhelming lead in the polls, their opinions seem inadequate.
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Haley has focused much of her campaign efforts on New Hampshire, where independent voters make up a significant share of the Republican primary electorate.
But more than a third of independents surveyed in the FT Michigan poll said they trust Trump the most to handle the economy, followed by Haley at just 10 percent. About a quarter of independents said they didn't trust any of their Republican rivals on the economy.
Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, said the results partly reflected that respondents were more familiar with Trump's economic policies than those of Haley or DeSantis.
“Many Republicans and quite a few Democrats remember that the economy was better under Trump than it is now, whether that was actually the case or not,” he added.
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Trump has also received a boost in recent weeks from multiple national polls showing him defeating President Joe Biden in a hypothetical neck-and-neck race.
Biden has staked his reelection in part on “Bidenomics,” an agenda based on billions of dollars in public investments, a focus on middle-income workers and a push to renew parts of the Rust Belt and spur investment in new manufacturing capacity.
The White House announced a record number of jobs created under Biden and on Friday welcomed a record jobs report for December that “confirms that 2023 was a great year for American workers.”
But the president is struggling with persistently low approval ratings and an electorate that continues to view his handling of the economy negatively.
The latest FT-Michigan Ross poll found that just 38 percent of voters said they approved of Biden's handling of the economy, compared to 60 percent who disapproved.
85 percent of respondents cited price increases as one of their biggest sources of stress, just over half cited their income levels, while about a quarter cited either rent or credit card costs.
Trump has criticized Bidenomics in his Trump speeches and recently blamed his likely general election opponent for an “inflation catastrophe” that “destroys your savings and destroys your dreams.”
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“Just ask yourself, were you better five years ago? Or are you better off today when bacon inflation costs you four times as much as you did a while ago?” Trump asked at a recent campaign rally in Waterloo, Iowa. “No one has ever seen anything like this.”
Inflation has more than halved over the past year and is around 3.1 percent in November 2023, although more than 50 percent of survey participants believe from their own experience that prices have risen more.
The FT-Michigan Ross poll was conducted online between December 28, 2023 and January 2, 2024 by Democratic strategists Global Strategy Group and Republican pollster North Star Opinion Research. It reflects the opinions of 1,000 registered voters across the country and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
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