Presidential Popularity No Longer Driven by the Economy

Seth Masket: “A lot of political science and punditry on US presidential popularity has tended to take some form of ‘the economy, stupid’ — when the economy is growing, voters like the president and his party, and when it’s shrinking, they don’t. And that was a good description of the politics of the second half of the 20th century. As John Sides and Robert Griffin have demonstrated, there was a strong correlation between presidential approval and economic performance from the presidencies of John F. Kennedy through George W. Bush.”

“But this correlation has essentially vanished during the past three presidents.”