By Stephen Fisher, 14th November 2024
In last week’s US presidential election there was a modest swing to the Republicans across the country including in the most marginal states. That swing was broadly consistent across different counties (see hereand here), suggesting national-level factors were the most important.
Post-covid inflation (which apparently made the median voter poorer) led to a drop in approval for the Biden administration from which it never recovered. As Nate Cohn has pointed out, “no party has ever retained the White House when the president’s approval rating was as low as it is today and when so many Americans thought the country was on the wrong track.”
Voters told opinion pollsters that the economy was their main concern and that they think Trump would manage the economy better than Harris. Those who expressed the most concern about the economy swung more heavily to Trump. Similarly, the most economically insecure socio-demographic groups were the ones that apparently swung most to Trump.
Nearly all the forecasting models based on economic factors from the academic forecasting symposiumsuggested Trump would win the share of the vote as he has done. Most strikingly, Ray Fair’s model, which uses only retrospective economic data, prior shares of the vote and incumbency (which party is in the White House), predicted Trump would win 50.5% of the two-party vote. That is extremely close to the 51.0% he appears to have secured.
The ousting of the Democrats also fits a broader international pattern whereby incumbent governments have suffered substantial losses in 2024. By such international comparisons, both the US economy and the Democrat vote held up fairly well. Just not well enough for Kamala Harris.
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