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GOP
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It is clear that the economy is going to play a big role in the election (whether it's the #1 issue, or just one of the top three or four or five). Fundamentally, by nearly every measure every economist uses, the economy is doing very well. Unemployment, inflation, and gas prices are way down. Yes, prices are higher than 4 years ago, but if the definition of a "good" economy is "prices are lower than they were 4 years ago," then the last election with a good economy was in 1932, and at the time, many people thought the economy was not so good.
Given the indicators, economists think the economy is doing great and yesterday 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists signed a letter saying that Kamala Harris' economic agenda is "vastly superior" to Donald Trump's. The letter said that Harris' program will "improve our nation's health, investment, sustainability, resilience, employment opportunities, and fairness and be vastly superior to the counterproductive economic agenda of Donald Trump." The letter specifically points out that Trump's tax and tariff policies would cause inflation and balloon the federal deficit.
The letter was spearheaded by Columbia University Prof. Joseph Stiglitz, who received the Prize in 2001. This is his second foray into the election. In June, he got a group of 15 Nobel Prize winners to write a letter saying that Donald Trump's economic plans would destabilize the economy. Trump slammed them as "worthless out of touch" economists. Stiglitz is getting closer and closer to full participation, as there are only 38 winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences who are alive and eligible to vote in U.S. elections. And three of those 38 were born in Canada, so we assume Stiglitz excluded them on principle.
Will these letters matter? Without giving away our view of the electorate too much, we suspect that the endorsement of one popular rap artist—for example, Lizzo—carries more weight than 23 Nobel Prize winners in an area people do care about: the economy. But will it have ANY impact? It might, particularly among affluent college-educated suburban voters who have always voted Republican and who dislike Trump personally. These are basically the Nikki Haley voters. They despise Trump personally but like his policies, especially on taxes. But if they read that economists who understand this kind of stuff say his policies will cause inflation to come roaring back, that might just get some of them to flip. (V)