# Does the state of the economy influence your vote for president? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [December 16, 2019, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925 "2019-12-16T03:16:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/21 "2019-12-18T08:14:55Z")
Single issue voter here. The issue is not the economy; it’s NO REPUBLICAN SHOULD EVER WIN ELECTIVE OFFICE. When the Republican Party ceases to exist, I’ll start considering other issues. ---
**Author:** ![Delicious](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@Delicious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delicious)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/22 "2019-12-18T10:26:09Z")
It would depend on which aspect of the economy. If median wages are improving due to policies the current government have applied, that’d be a big factor. If the stock market is booming for the same reason, I don’t care that much. ---
**Author:** ![str8cashhomie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7cd45c/32.png) [@str8cashhomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/str8cashhomie)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/23 "2019-12-18T10:53:18Z")
I don’t think this is a particularly valid poll because the economy is one of those things that can influence people without them even realizing it, and people who are politically engaged enough to be arguing about politics on the internet are more likely to have already made up their minds to the point where a boom/recession wouldn’t flip them. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/24 "2019-12-18T12:42:01Z")
It’s possible that the economy had a knock on effect on my choice in the first Presidential election I voted in - Bill Clinton over Bush the Greater. Bush made _such_ a big deal over not raising taxes that when he did I considered that a deal breaker, even though I agreed with the decision, and it’s possible that he thought it was necessary due to the economy (which wouldn’t fly these days with the party of voodoo economics.) In succeeding elections, I’ve voted for the Democratic Party except in 1996 when I voted third party because Clinton was a sleazebag. The economy won’t influence my decision in this upcoming election. I’d even take an economic hit to avoid the risk of sliding further from democracy. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/25 "2019-12-18T15:20:59Z")
The economy is indeed an important issue. And the fucking Republicans believe that low taxes, zero regulation and rapacious capitalism is best for the country in the long term. They’re idiots and they’re wrong. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/26 "2019-12-18T20:34:10Z")
The state of the economy at the time of the election has little or no influence on my vote for president, in part because I don’t think presidents are in control of the economy. They can do some things which affect it, but in addition to the fact that I don’t think anybody understands the economy well enough to control it, there are way too many other factors that aren’t under their control. (If they could control it, every president would always have a roaring good economy, wouldn’t they?) If I think a president’s policies will have a long term effect on the economy, that’s a factor. But it’s nowhere near the only factor, and it’s unlikely to be the tipping factor; partly because other issues are more important to me, and partly because, hey, I don’'t understand the economy well enough to be sure how to control it, either. Voted no, as being closest to the above. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/27 "2019-12-18T21:25:51Z")
Yeah, it’s not binary for me, so I can’t answer the poll. But, on the whole, the economy is maybe a background, unconscious factor, but not really terribly important. Morons, like Trump, are idiots about _everything_, not just the economy. And some of those everythings could have more serious repercussions than simply “the economy.” ---
**Author:** ![squidfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@squidfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squidfood)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/28 "2019-12-18T21:52:34Z")
Hypothesis: when individual voters don’t have a lot of simmering anger you get a status quo election, with the result perhaps driven by lower turnout by low-information voters who shrug. Simmering anger = change. “The economy” is probably the largest single macro-index of simmering anger (e.g. lots of unemployed = lots of angry people). But these are individual decisions based on personal circumstances (for which “the economy” is an index), it’s not so much (IMO) that people are each saying “in abstract, the economic indices are doing well, therefore I want to re-elect”. I’m not sure “the economy” is a good measure of dissatisfaction this time, because (1) there’s a lot of that anger about non-economic stuff and (2) the current economic boom seems far less penetrating in terms of actual good results for people, at least from where I stand. For myself, my personal economy is $20K worse than 3-4 years ago, because of insane rises in health care costs, so I don’t care about “the economy” but I damn well care about my personal economic circumstances, which maps to simmering anger about health care. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/29 "2019-12-18T21:53:04Z")
I don’t credit a president for a good economy if they’re making decisions that are likely to be harmful; I don’t fault a president for a bad economy if they’re making decisions that I expect to be helpful. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/30 "2019-12-18T22:10:22Z")
I voted No. The only thing that affects my vote for President is whether a candidate is or is not a Republican. The candidate with the best chance to beat the Republican gets my vote, no matter what, every time, till the day I die. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/31 "2019-12-18T22:16:52Z")
> [@bobot](#): > > The candidate with the best chance to beat the Republican gets my vote, no matter what, every time, till the day I die. I wouldn’t go that far. The parties have changed positions – in fact entirely changed places – before. It could happen again. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2019, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/32 "2019-12-18T22:58:23Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I wouldn’t go that far. The parties have changed positions – in fact entirely changed places – before. It could happen again. Not happening. If you want to know the future of the Republican party, look at the fate of the Whig party. Half of it tainted by supporting the sin of slavery, the other half moving on to become something else entirely. Though to be honest, this situation is fairly unprecedented because the Republicans are way more strongly unified than the Whigs ever were. If there’s going to be a split, someone’s going to have to do a lot of unpalatable backtracking and gaslighting. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2019, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/33 "2019-12-19T00:40:19Z")
I don’t think the president can do much in the short term to influence the economy. For all that Roosevelt did to ease the impact of the depression, he never ended it. The war did that. And it is certainly arguable that Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagall led to the great recession. That and the fact that the regulators, especially Greenspan, failed to regulate. But the bust took 10 years to arrive. And we see that Trump has not yet succeeded in causing a recession, despite trying mightily. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2019, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/34 "2019-12-19T04:14:51Z")
I would normally have voted the state of the economy does NOT affect my vote. I have a degree in economics and understand generally how little a President actually controls the economy. However, in the current case, things like unilateral trade wars and creating major uncertainty in the global economy is the direct outcome of trump, I had to change my canned response to it DOES affect my vote in 2020. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2019, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/35 "2019-12-19T13:11:48Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I doubt many people think, “how is the economy? Good? Okay, I’ll vote to keep the current guy.” But I think that people who are out of work, or otherwise have some hardship related to how the country is doing are more likely to be seeking a change, and vote against incumbents. And when the economy is bad, there are a lot more of those people. This sounds true. The better daily life is, the less one tends to think about politics. And the worse daily life is, the more tempting it is to look anyplace but in the mirror for someone to blame. Personally I consider the economy a little bit, but place more weight on other issues like how do we seem to be faring with foreign policy–are we making lots of corpses for no good reason; does the country seem to have a direction domestically; how does it feel to be an American; that sort of fluff. But if you focus primarily on the economy, then you’re willing to allow all sorts of shenanigans as long as you’re getting money. That’s not who I want to be. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/36 "2019-12-29T18:38:39Z")
I’ve been voting since 1968, with very few ballots cast for GOPs at any level. (I’ve mostly been P&F and Green). A few Bay Area GOP pols had _some_ sense of reality, so there. But I look back at my presidential support over the decades. My most mainstream trend was working for Jerry Brown in 1992 (and voting for him in every his election except Oakland because I was elsewhere). Elsewhen, I was moved by social policy, not economics. My union-member father voted for California’s disastrous Prop.13 because he feared losing his house otherwise. I look at GOPs trying to dismantle all social programs. Losing Social Security won’t kill me; losing Medicare will. Fuck those who try to take away what I’ve paid premiums for, all my life. GOPs hate the idea of a healthy, prosperous America. They are traitors who work to support a foreign enemy waging war on the US. Fuck them all. Vote them out. Get the tar and feathers. GOP are now the American Nazi Party. Never forget. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2019, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925/37 "2019-12-30T16:02:11Z")
I can’t see absolutely anything besides the letter next to their name affecting my vote for president in my lifetime. Republicans needing to be stopped is the only reason I even vote. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-state-of-the-economy-influence-your-vote-for-president/844925.md?page=1)