Читать книгу Making Sense of the 2016 Elections - John A. Clark - Страница 8

Political scientists who study elections in the United States generally focus on a wide array of factors that might influence the outcome. These factors range from the general state of the economy in the months leading up to the election to where the candidates campaigned in the final weeks of the campaign. There are debates among scholars concerning the relative importance of each of these factors.¹ Indeed, many believe that the campaign is of minimal importance and that a variety of fundamental factors such as the popularity of the incumbent president and the success of the economy are highly predictive of the eventual outcome of the election.²

Economic measures are thought to be important for understanding election outcomes because the party that holds the presidency is generally held responsible for economic conditions in the country. When the economy is doing well, voters tend to reward the party in control by reelecting their candidates to office; but when the economy is doing poorly, voters tend to punish the incumbent party. For example, in 2008, Republican candidate John McCain faced a very difficult electoral environment largely because an economic crisis had begun earlier that year while another Republican—George W. Bush—still held office. As economic conditions continued to deteriorate during that election, Republicans largely took the blame, and this made McCain’s pursuit of the White House an uphill battle. He ultimately lost the national popular vote to Barack Obama by 7 points, and Obama carried 365 electoral votes on his way to a landslide victory.

In 2012, the nature of economic conditions was not quite as clear. While the economy had been steadily improving since Obama’s first year in office, the unemployment rate was still relatively high at the beginning of that year. Nonetheless, Obama received enough credit for the improvements in the economy to help him edge past Republican nominee Mitt Romney by about 4 percentage points.

By 2016, economic conditions were more clearly improved compared to what they had been in 2012. The unemployment rate had settled around 5 percent, the lowest it had been since early 2008. Other economic measures, such as gross domestic product growth, were also generally strong, if not spectacular. Many in the public also viewed their own economic situations in a favorable light. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in October 2016 found that about half of Americans rated their personal financial situations as either good or excellent.³ This was the highest level of satisfaction with personal finances since early 2008, before the Great Recession began.

Interestingly, political scientists have found that vote choices are generally more influenced by the direction in which economic conditions are heading rather than by the overall conditions themselves. In other words, the unemployment rate is generally not a good predictor of how presidential elections will turn out, but the more recent changes in the unemployment rate are more influential. Figure 1 shows the relationship between changes in the unemployment rate during the year before each election since 1952 and the incumbent party’s share of the two-party vote in those elections. The line in the plot shows a strong trend that when the unemployment rate is increasing in the twelve months leading up to the election, the incumbent party tends to receive a lower percentage of the vote; but when the unemployment rate is dropping, the incumbent party performs better. In 2016, the unemployment rate had dropped by 0.3 percentage points from where it had been at the same time in 2015. Based on previous patterns, this meant that Clinton should win about 51 percent of the two-party vote. As of our writing of this supplement, she had actually received 50.9 percent of the two-party vote. Thus, the election results were very much in line with what we might have expected from standard economic indicators.

Even as economic conditions improved markedly during Obama’s second term, Obama did not enjoy a significant boost in his approval rating as a result. A president’s approval rating is the percentage of Americans who say that they approve of the job he is doing as president. When presidents enjoy higher approval ratings, their parties tend to perform better in elections. For example, in 1988, George H. W. Bush won the presidency partly because approval of Ronald Reagan was above 50 percent. In 2000, Al Gore won the national popular vote (though not the presidency) thanks in part to outgoing President Bill Clinton’s nearly 60 percent approval rating. In 2008, John McCain struggled against Barack Obama because of President George W. Bush’s very low 25% approval rating. As 2016 began, Obama’s approval rating steadily hovered just below 50 percent. He was less popular than Clinton in 2000, but much more popular than Bush had been in 2008.

Figure 1 The Relationship between Change in Unemployment and the Incumbent Party’s Share of the Two-Party Vote for President

Note: Figure created by authors using data from the Federal Reserve. X-axis shows change in unemployment rate from 3rd quarter of year preceding election to 3rd quarter of the election year. Y-axis is proportion of the vote for the major party candidates received by the candidate from the party that held the White House.

In short, Obama was popular enough and the economy was strong enough to give a Democratic candidate for president a reasonable shot at winning in 2016, but Obama was not so popular that this would be an easy victory for the Democrats. Adding to the challenge for Democrats was the fact that a third factor also tends to play a role in presidential elections—voters tend to not return the same party to the White House for three consecutive terms. Indeed, since Harry Truman won re-election in 1948 there has only been one instance when presidents from the same party won the presidency in three consecutive elections (Republicans did so in 1980, 1984, and 1988). This pattern likely arises because voters develop a desire for change over time, and also because a party’s supporters may become complacent when their party wins several elections in a row. Thus, Democrats were also facing the challenge of trying to retain control of the White House for a rare third consecutive term.