History Shows Presidents Get Re-Elected When Unemployment Is High _ So Long As It's Falling

[Purveyor]

By PAUL WISEMAN | Associated Press | Jan 7, 2012 11:29 AM CST in

Unemployment is higher than it's been going into any election year since World War II.

But history shows that won't necessarily stop President Barack Obama from reclaiming the White House.

In a presidential election year, the unemployment trend can be more important to an incumbent's chances than the unemployment rate.

Going back to 1956 no incumbent president has lost when unemployment fell over the two years leading up to the election. And none has won when it rose.

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http://www.newser.com/article/d9s481s00/history-shows-presidents-get-re-elected-when-unemployment-is-high-so-long-as-its-falling.html

[treestar]

1. What's odd about that is

How much it presumes. That there is a socialist economy that the President controls and therefore the President is responsible for the economy.

[Douglas Carpenter]

2. well it is not particularly rational - but it is the swing voters who will primarily vote

according to the economic trend right at the moment and that is what will sway an election - not whether the candidate is liberal or conservative or centrist or left-wing or right-wing. As Brian Griffin famously said, “independent swing voters are the biggest idiots on earth.” They are certainly not people who are very interested in politics. But this class of disinterested voters will hold the balance of power in elections. People who are clearly politically definable are probably pretty much loyal to one party or the other.

All polls showed Mondale trouncing Reagan in a landslide from late 1982 even up until September of 1983. Equally peculiar - when Reagan defeated Mondale in 49 out of 50 states in November 1984 - polling indicated that most of the public were in far more agreement with Mondale than Reagan on the issues. An incumbent heading into reelection just wants to make sure that the economic feeling in the air is one of Spring Time in American not the winter of discontent. While the challenger to incumbency needs the opposite. This will count far more in determining who actually wins the election than whatever positions the candidate will take or whatever strategy the candidate’s campaign advisors put together.

[treestar]

3. I recall 1996

And the economy was doing very well and hearing people say they were voting for Clinton, because things were good. So it does happen.

Though it may not be an absolute rule. FDR won an election in a bad economy.

2004 - the economy was OK. Incumbents are likely to win in general, unless they are perceived to have done really poorly.