"The Democracy, Stupid!"
We still want security and safety, but that means something different than it used to.
Once upon a time, you could tell me the inflation and unemployment rates in the summer before a presidential election and I could tell you who was going to win.
That’s because economic outcomes drove voter choices.
This was the essence of James Carville’s famous observation that presidential elections boil down to “the economy, stupid.” If people are happy with their economic lot they will reward the incumbent party. If they aren’t, they’ll vote for the challenger. You don’t have to overthink it.
Carville’s dictum is rooted in the belief that people look to the president to keep them safe and secure. This usually means maintaining peace and prosperity.
Since the Cold War, it has mostly meant prosperity. There was a time when presidential candidates had to assure the public they wouldn’t start a nuclear war (a test Goldwater failed in 64 and was a challenge for Reagan in 80), but that standard fell with the Berlin Wall. Physical security was a defining issue for George W. Bush in 04, when we were at war in Afghanistan and Iraq while the aftershocks of the 9/11 attack reverberated through our politics, but that was an exception.
Otherwise, keeping people safe has meant maintaining a strong enough economy to provide voters with the means for financial security—jobs and manageable prices. This has placed economic outcomes at the center of our elections.
Despite real limitations on the president’s ability to shape the economy, voters will reward the incumbent party for low or falling inflation and unemployment and punish incumbents when prices are rising or people are being thrown out of work.
At least until now.
In recent months, there has been a curious disconnect between objectively strong inflation and unemployment data and Joe Biden’s job approval and re-elect numbers.
In absolute and relative terms, things look good—even great. After peaking at 9.1% last summer, the July inflation rate was 3.2%, a slight uptick from June following a full year of monthly declines. Job figures are even better. Despite a series of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes designed to slow the economy, the unemployment rate stood at 3.5% last month.
Statistics like these historically determine the fate of a president’s re-election efforts, and the White House has not been shy about claiming credit:
This is Bidenomics in action: Our economy added more than 200,000 jobs last month—for a total of 13.2 million jobs since I took office. That’s more jobs added in two and a half years than any president has ever created in a four-year term. The unemployment rate has now remained below 4 percent for 17 months in a row—the longest stretch since the 1960s. The share of working-age Americans who have jobs is at the highest level in over 20 years. Inflation has come down by more than half. We are seeing stable and steady growth.
And yet, the president’s job approval in July was a meager 41%.
What’s going on?
If the state of the economy were the overwhelming determinant of presidential job performance (and by extension the president’s re-election prospects), we would have expected to see Biden’s approval numbers rise as inflation fell, and Biden should be far ahead in presidential horserace polling.
Voters will reward the incumbent party for low or falling inflation and unemployment and punish incumbents when prices are rising or people are being thrown out of work. At least until now.
I think some of what’s happening can be attributed to a relentlessly negative news narrative that focused on high inflation and on how it was only a matter of time before those interest rate hikes would cause a recession. But that narrative has turned sunnier in recent weeks as financial elites that shape coverage have started noticing the overall health of the economy. Through it all, Biden’s job approval has been flat.
Something more than the news agenda is driving the disconnect between economic results and political outcomes.
Let’s think for a minute about what it means to be safe and secure in a moment like ours.
At a time when authoritarianism is on the ballot, when election losers fear being disempowered, when two hostile camps struggle to advance outcomes which are unacceptable to the other side—in an environment like this, security can be had only if your side wins.
For those who see the MAGA agenda as a threat to democracy, who listen to Donald Trump talk about using the presidency to exact revenge against his political enemies, who are angry about the abortion rights they have lost and fearful of what other rights may be taken away from them, security is keeping Trump and Trumpism out of power.
For those MAGA adherents who believe elites have rigged democracy against them, who fear losing status and power to groups that don’t look like them or share their values, and who are angry about how society is changing and want to prevent it from happening, security is making sure Trump is returned to what they regard as his rightful place in the White House.
These are concerns of a higher order than economic security, meta-issues which can blunt the political effectiveness of more mundane matters like the cost of living and confound conventional election forecasts.
That’s not to suggest that traditional security measures don’t matter. If positive inflation news continues through the fall and we avoid a recession, I would expect to see it reflected in Biden’s job approval. And a strong economy will undoubtedly help Biden’s case for re-election.
But meta-security concerns will put a cap on how much credit Biden will get. In 1984, when inflation was 4.3% and unemployment stood at 7.1%, Ronald Reagan carried 49 states. Both figures were sharply down from when Reagan took office, and the electorate gave Reagan the credit.
There has been a curious disconnect between objectively strong inflation and unemployment data and Joe Biden’s job approval and re-elect numbers.
By the logic of 1984, Biden would be heading for a landslide victory, with much better top line economic figures than Reagan.
By the logic of 2024, that’s never going to happen. There is literally nothing Biden can do to earn the approval of a MAGA camp that sees him as an illegitimate president, putting a ceiling on the political benefits of a statistically strong economy.
But just as Trump supporters will never believe the Biden administration has been good for the economy, the anti-MAGA coalition will ultimately support Biden regardless of how they assess the country’s economic circumstances. Too much is on the line for them to do otherwise, as we saw last year when Democrats beat back a red wave despite inflation being twice what it is today and Biden’s job approval sitting where it is now.
The day will return when judgments about economic security determine elections. But as long as Trump has a hold on our politics, higher-order threats will factor more prominently into voter judgments.
It’s the democracy, stupid—until we can secure it.