There’s an old saying that goes, “If you put 10 economists in a room, you’ll get 11 opinions.” The data, meanwhile, shows that if you ask U.S. voters how they feel about the economy, their opinions will largely fall along party lines: Democrats with a Democratic president are more likely to say the economy is good, and vice versa. Voters also rank the economy as their most important issue when choosing a presidential candidate — even though presidents may have less influence over the economy than most people think.

Are these discrepancies making your head spin yet? Mine sure is.

One thing’s for certain: The economy has been a major talking point on the campaign trail for both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Trump wants you to think that President Joe Biden’s administration “destroyed the economy”; he’s repeatedly claimed that his own presidency ushered in “the greatest economy in the history of our country.” Harris is tasked with the difficult feat of running on the economic wins of the Biden-Harris administration, while acknowledging that voters’ current view of the economy is far from rosy. With Election Day less than a week away and Trump and Harris locked in a dead heat, how both candidates spin their economic pitches could tip the balance on the nation’s vote.

Let’s take a look at some facts.

If something reeks of hyperbole, it probably is one. No, the economy under Trump was not “the greatest in the history of our country,” although his presidency saw relatively low inflation. If the 2020 pandemic is excluded, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 2.67 percent, similar to Biden’s 3.4 percent.

But the pandemic did, of course, happen — and when taken into account, GDP growth under Trump was a measly 1.45 percent. An independent commission found that Trump’s botched response to COVID-19 fueled more deaths; the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, has claimed that the administration’s response spurred an economic fallout.

Whatever way you slice it, Trump’s GDP — the value of all goods and services produced in the country each year — was not all that different from his predecessor nor his successor. (GDP growth under Obama averaged a........

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