How Much Will The Recession Factor Into Trump’s Chances?
As Nate has written before, a bad economy makes for a tough reelection. And we’re in a bad economy (likely for a while). So, does that sink an already unpopular incumbent like Trump? Not quite. Like just about everything in 2020, even the relatively objective state of the economy is partisan. At the time of the September jobs report release, only 8 percent of Democrats rated the conditional of the national economy as good, compared to 80 percent of Republicans.
Part of that difference can be attributed to a difference of perspective: Republicans see month-to-month growth; Democrats see an economy still in the COVID-19 hole. With so few undecided voters, and such wildly different interpretations of the economy, the current recession might not be the kind of major factor you’d expect in a standard election cycle.