Voters in new poll trust Republicans on economy, Democrats on health care

Voters say they trust Republicans more on the economy and Democrats more on health care and abortion, according to a poll released Tuesday. 

In the NBC News national poll, the GOP had a 21-point advantage when voters were asked which party they trusted more to deal with the economy; 28 percent trusted the Democratic party and 49 percent trusted the Republican party. These figures are largely consistent with those from 2021 and 2022.

The parties were roughly equal when voters were asked which they trusted more on “looking out for the middle class,” with 36 percent of voters saying Democrats and 34 percent saying Republicans.

These numbers are the latest in a decadelong trend away from Democrats on the issue. When the question was last asked in an NBC News poll in October 2018, Democrats had an 8-point advantage, with 39 percent of voters trusting Democrats to look after the middle class and 31 percent trusting Republicans. Democrats’ advantage was higher still in years prior.

Republicans also had a 30-point advantage in the most recent poll when voters were asked which party they would trust more to handle border security, with 50 percent saying Republicans and 20 percent saying Democrats. That represents a modest dip in GOP support from one year ago, when 56 percent trusted Republicans more.

Trust in Democrats on the issue remained consistent from the previous year, but the share of voters who said they trusted “neither” rose from 13 percent last year to 18 percent this year.

Democrats, meanwhile, had a 23-point advantage when voters were asked about health care, with 45 percent saying they trust Democrats and 22 percent saying they trust Republicans. Democrats’ edge on the issue has grown in recent years: It stood at 20 percentage points in 2022 and 18 points in 2018. 

Democrats also held a double-digit advantage on abortion in the most recent poll, with 46 percent of voters saying they trusted Democrats on the issue and 28 percent saying they trusted Republicans — an 18-point gap. Democrats had an even larger edge of 22 points in September 2022, however, when they received 47 percent support on the issue compared to Republicans’ 25 percent. The change largely comes from voters who said they trusted “both about the same,” who made up 10 percent of respondents in 2022 and 6 percent in 2023. 

Democrats’ advantage on abortion still represents a notable increase from October 2021, when 39 percent of voters trusted them, which was 7 points lower than today. Republicans’ support in 2021 was at 29 percent, which was 1 point lower than today. Those figures came before the Supreme Court sided against Roe v. Wade in June 2022, eliminating the nearly 50-year-old constitutional right to abortion and enabling a number of Republican states to restrict or ban the procedure.

Meanwhile, even as Republicans have increasingly focused on education as a winning issue, voters have barely moved on the issue since 2021, according to the NBC News polls. Voters trusted Democrats more on education by 10 points in 2021, by 11 points in 2022 and by 10 points in 2023.

The poll was conducted Sept. 15-19 among 1,000 registered voters, 40 percent of whom are or lean Democratic and 39 percent of whom are or lean Republican. About a third intend to vote in each party’s primary, and another third plan to wait until the general election. The poll had a margin of error of roughly plus or minus 3.1 percent.