Well what do you know turns out Dems are better for the economy. "Since 1945, the Standard & Poor’s 500—a market index of 500 leading U.S. publicly traded companies—has averaged an annual gain of 11.2% during years when Democrats controlled the White House, and a 6.9% average gain under Republicans. In the same time period, gross domestic product grew by an average of 4.1% under Democrats, 2.5% under Republicans. Job growth, too, is significantly stronger under Democrats than Republicans. “[T]here has been a stark pattern in the United States for nearly a century,” wrote David Leonhardt of the New York Times last year, “The economy has grown significantly faster under Democratic presidents than Republican ones.” The persistence of the myth that Democrats are bad for the economy is an interesting example of the endurance of political rhetoric over reality." Who knew? DD
Doesn't tell me much. There may be a lag between the installation of policies and the impacts of those policies on economic growth. There would be a difficult-to-quantify amount of credit-shifting from administration to administration. Moreover, it may be the economic outcomes that are driving election outcomes instead of the other way around. For example, a slow period (say Bush Sr) results in a transfer of power, but then the economy's own self-correction is credited to the new president. And the metrics they choose to cite makes a lot of difference. Growth of the S&P 500? All that tells you is how well the stock market performed for rich people. GDP, again, really just matters to rich people. Job growth - getting warmer. Wage growth would be better metric, but still a bit lacking. None of that is to say that Democrats aren't as good or better at running the economy. Just that this little factoid mostly just tells me that Democratic presidents might have been better at enriching rich people. My father struggled a lot in the 70s and 80s and 90s finding good work as a tradesman. And he makes this observation -- that under Democratic presidents, things would start looking up but then every time a Republican was elected all his prospects went to hell. Contrast with my experience of being continuously employed as a white-collar corporate stooge for 20+ years, never seeing a drop in pay or worrying if I'd have a job the next day, no matter who the president is. I know my father's experience because I saw it as a kid, but I sit in a different place in the economy than he had and the experience is completely different. GDP doesn't matter to the tradesman any more than does the S&P 500.
that may be so for one-term POTUS's, but for 2-termers such as Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, W, and Obama, it is a reflection of their economic policies over the 8-yr period.
