Does The Economy Still Matter In Presidential Politics?
... Not as much as it used to. Partisan and polarization matter more.
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It’s (Not) The Economy Stupid
The Washington Post’s Dan Balz is generally considered one of the most insightful observers of modern American politics. On Friday, he wrote a piece asking a question that would seem to be the key issue of next year’s presidential campaign: “Can Biden make ‘Bidenomics’ a winning message in 2024?”
Few political objectives are more important for President Biden than winning the economic debate in 2024. Democrats know that their chances of prevailing in the presidential election are severely diminished if the Republican nominee and the GOP are seen as more capable and trusted on this issue.
Over the past two weeks, Biden and members of his administration have begun a campaign to win that debate. The president recently delivered a major speech in Chicago about his economic plans and record. On Thursday, he was in South Carolina reinforcing the message that “Bidenomics” is working and will deliver more for the country and working people in the months and years ahead. Biden is working to change perceptions about what his program can and will deliver to raise people’s optimism about the economy’s future.
… Biden’s goal is to raise public opinion of the direction of the economy by early next summer, when attitudes begin to lock in for the fall election. If Trump is the Republican nominee, Biden can least afford for more Americans to regard the former president as stronger on the economy. Other issues will shape voters’ attitudes and motivation, but there is no escape from the central role the economy will probably play in how persuadable voters make their choice.
Balz is stating presidential politics conventional wisdom 101: as goes the economy, so goes the incumbent president’s reelection prospects. That certainly was the case for Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, who lost their bids for a second term because of a lousy economy. But the relationship between voter perspectives on the economy and presidential approval, which used to go hand-in-hand, is not what it once was.
Beginning near the tail end of the Obama administration, economic sentiment and presidential approval started to move in different directions — and were increasingly influenced by partisan attitudes. A solid economic rebound did not lead to significantly higher approval ratings for Obama.
For Trump, however, the gap was even wider. In early 2019, 75 percent of Republicans rated the economy as excellent or good — only 32 percent of Democrats agreed. Indeed, in March 2019, Gallup recorded the highest-ever approval rating for Trump’s handling of the economy, at 56%. Yet, his approval rating was 43% — which was about the same level it had been throughout his presidency. In short, Trump received no personal boost from the electorate’s rosy views about the state of the economy.
To put it succinctly, Republicans were unwilling to give Obama credit for an improving economy … and Democrats were disinclined to reward Trump for the longest economic expansion in American history.
As John Sides, Lynn Vavreck, and Chris Tausanovitch put it in their analysis of the 2020 election:
Strong partisanship has weakened the relationship between the economy and presidential approval, in part because people are loath to give the opposing party’s president credit for a growing economy or to punish their own party’s president when the economy goes south. Similarly, a more polarized political environment may make presidential election outcomes less sensitive to changes in the economy because so many partisans are unwilling to support the opposing party’s candidate under any circumstances.
Sides and Vavreck also co-wrote a fantastic book about the 2016 election called “Identity Crisis” that concluded identity (racial, partisan, tribal, etc.) played a disproportionate role in propelling Donald Trump to the White House in 2016.
And in the three elections since that unexpected outcome (2018, 2020, and 2022), the political backlash against Trump has dramatically benefited the Democratic Party, particularly in blue and purple states. In short, partisan identity and views about Trump (which tend to operate in tandem) have become a hugely consequential factor in electoral outcomes.
And along these lines, here is one more useful data point to consider. According to 2022 midterm exit poll data from ABC News, 76% of voters had a negative view of the economy. That was 24 points higher than when Biden took office and 45 points greater than during the 2018 midterms four years ago. In addition, “47% said their own finances have gotten worse in the last two years, the most dating to 1982.” And yet, Democrats dramatically overperformed — picking up a seat in the Senate, losing far fewer House seats than expected (based on historical precedent), and winning key governorships in several major swing states. The electorate’s negative views about the economy were outweighed by anger over the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, the growing fealty of younger and women voters to the Democratic Party, and revulsion at extremist, Trump-allied Republican candidates (particularly those who denied the results of the 2020 presidential election).
This data suggests that for all of the Biden administration’s focus on putting out a positive economic message between now and November 2024 … voter attitudes about the issue may not necessarily be decisive.
Moreover, I’m not sure that the president talking about it 16 months before voters head to the polls will make that much of a difference. Biden isn’t going to convince Republicans. He might make some inroads with the small number of persuadable voters, but ultimately one would imagine that it will come down to results rather than rhetoric for them. What I mean is that if the economy is doing better in 2024 — and consumer sentiment has improved — that probably will matter slightly more than whatever Biden does or doesn’t say about It.
I suspect that one of the reasons Biden is talking about the economy now is he wants to reassure Democrats and strengthen his position within the party in case some enterprising politician (who is not an anti-vaxxer) decides to challenge him for the party nomination. It could also be that he is trying and neutralize the economy as a 2024 issue. In other words, he wants to make the case for Bideneconomics, not with the aim of winning the fight, but rather having the messaging and the argument in place to make coming GOP attacks less effective. Then again … maybe Biden and his team think the economy — as it has in the past — is the key issue for 2024.
To be clear, I don’t mean to suggest that the economy doesn’t matter. Even with its diminished importance, it is hard to imagine an incumbent winning reelection facing a significant deficit on the issue. Just because it’s less important than other factors hardly means it’s irrelevant. Positive views about Biden’s economic stewardship could be decisive in a close election.
But, when it comes to the overall political outlook for 2024, it seems as though other factors will play a more significant role. In an era of stark political divides (starker than any in recent memory), the economy is not quite what it used to be.
More to Read
This is from a few weeks ago, but here’s a fascinating 2022 post-mortem from Equis that suggests, among other things, one of the reasons Democrats held their own among Latino voters is because those who considered abortion the number one issue were more motivated than those who put the economy at the top.
Tom Edsall has some thoughts on the 2024 election … and this is a fascinating bit of data.
One of the most significant developments in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election has emerged largely under the radar. From 2016 to 2022, the number of white people without college degrees — the core of Donald Trump’s support — has fallen by 2.1 million.
Over the same period, the number of white people who have graduated from college — an increasingly Democratic constituency — has grown by 13.3 million.
These trends do not bode well for the prospects of Republican candidates, especially Trump. President Biden won white people with college degrees in 2020, 51 to 48 percent, but Trump won by a landslide, 67 to 32 percent, among white people without degrees, according to network exit polls.
This is a fascinating 2020 paper on the decline of economic voting in presidential elections. Here’s the conclusion.
Many “fundamentals” forecasting models of American elections are based, in part, on some indicator of national economic performance. Our findings strongly imply that the effect of economic performance on vote share is not constant, but rather varies as a function of polarization. In elections years amidst periods of high polarization, such as 2020, elections will tend to be shaped by underlying distributions of party loyalties rather than objective evaluations of incumbents’ performance in office. Our analysis predicts the national popular vote in the 2020 presidential election, for example, will be more competitive than we would have expected based on incumbency, mid-year economic performance, and approval alone. Efforts to forecast national election results should be attentive to partisan polarization.
What’s Going On
Clarence Thomas loves rich white people like I love the Grateful Dead.
Mike Tomasky on the mainstream media’s double standard when it comes to how they treat Democrats.
Read Geoffrey Skelley on the “No Labels” fantasy.
Elon Musk’s tenure at Twitter has been a dumpster fire.
Musical Interlude