Saratoga Standard

CHRISTIAN POLITICAL PARTY NATIONAL COMMITTEE issued the following announcement on July 6.

President Trump could be in trouble. A lot could still change between now and November, but historically, the strength of the economy is correlated with the electoral strength of the incumbent president, and right now, the economy doesn’t look especially good.

Between mid-March and the end of May, more than 38 million Americans applied for unemployment insurance. And even though the job market has shown some signs of improvement, many Americans are still out of work, and in June more of the people who lost their jobs were laid off permanently. And if the economic recovery progresses slowly — or halts and starts backsliding — it’s likely to drag down Trump’s reelection chances. At the very least, the downturn takes away what had been perhaps his strongest re-election argument.

Related: Which Economic Indicators Best Predict Presidential Elections?

Even in more normal election years, many voters still worry about the economy. The American National Election Studies, which has tracked public opinion since 1948, has for many years now asked voters what they think is the most important problem facing the country. And in the last three presidential election cycles, Americans have named the economy as their top concern, making it the most frequently cited issue. In 2008 (the last time we had a presidential election amid an economic crisis), 42 percent of Americans said the economy was the most important political problem. Since then, the share citing the economy as their top issue has dropped — it was 32 percent in 2012 and just 11 percent in 2016.

So far in 2020, polls show that anywhere from 1 in 5 to 1 in 3 voters rate the economy as their top concern. But let’s return to 2020 in a moment. So what do we know about these voters?

[Related: Our 2020 National Polling Averages]

To be clear, everyone is an economic voter to some extent, according to Michael Lewis-Beck, a professor of political science at the University of Iowa who studies economic voting and comparative politics. His research has found that the economy frequently ranks as the country’s most important problem unless there’s a big war going on. “It’s always at or near the top of the average voter’s agenda,” Lewis-Beck told me. Many voters factor the state of the national economy into their vote even if it’s not the most important issue to them.

But that doesn’t mean all voters prioritize the economy equally. In fact, according to our analysis of ANES data, there are two key traits that tend to correspond with being an economy-minded voter: higher income or a college education. These voters are also more likely to identify as Republican than as Democratic and are more likely to be white or Hispanic than Black.1

First up, as the table below shows, those with household incomes of $100,000 or more have consistently said the economy is the most important problem facing the country at higher rates than those in households making less. In 2008, for instance, only 36 percent of households making less than $50,000 said the economy was the top problem, whereas 51 percent of households making $100,000 or more said the same. In 2016, when all groups were less likely to say the economy was their top concern, that pattern wasn’t as stark, but it was still there.

Original source here.