Jonathan Bernstein: “Some Democrats are reportedly half-panicked by the possibility that the economy will rebound in the third quarter, and that Donald Trump will be able to capitalize on it in November. Given what we know about elections and the economy, should they be?”
“On the one hand, yes: Presidential approval, and therefore presidential re-election performance, is tied to events. We could expect it to take a hit given the current situation, and to improve if events improve. With an incumbent on the ballot, the election will mostly be a choice about keeping the president or throwing the bums out. It’s also true that voters have notoriously short memories. Political science research has found that the economy matters in elections, but only the election-year economy.”
“On the other hand, we also know that presidential approval tends to lag economic events. George H. W. Bush lost his re-election bid because of a recession that had already ended, and Democrats had terrible midterms in both 1994 and 2010 in part because the economy hadn’t fully recovered. Granted, the argument is that this recovery will likely produce extraordinary gains in the months leading up to the election, thanks to the even more extraordinary losses so far. But out-of-context numbers aren’t going to move voters; what will is whether they believe good times have returned. A partial bounce back, even a fast one, may not achieve that.”
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