Yesterday, the New York Times Week in Review section devoted a whole page to time series exit polls, all of which showed how Democrats lost ground in almost every single possible demographic cross-slice this election: women, whites, Protestants, Catholics, old people, even young people.
But one demographic slice was especially telling. It was the 41 percent of the population who said that their family’s financial situation was worse today than it was two years ago. They voted for Republicans by a 65-to-35 percent margin. What’s remarkable is that in 2008, this group of voters (then 42 percent of the total) broke 71-to-28 percent for Obama. And in 2004, it broke 79-to-20 percent for Kerry! But in 1996 and 2000, this category broke solidly for Bush! These are remarkable swings – what can explain them?
Likewise, the shifts have been the same for the smaller slice of the electorate saying their financial situation has gotten better. These folks broke 60-to-37 percent for McCain in 2008 (and 80-to-19 percent for Bush in 2004), only to break 60-to-40 percent for Democrats in 2008. Again: remarkable!
A number of possibilities seem implausible. One is that Democrats started doing much better financially with Barack Obama as President, and Republicans started doing much worse, leading a massive shift in the make-up of the “financial situation worse” category. This seems highly unlikely. A second possibility is that the demographic basis of this category is consistent, but just strongly, strongly anti-incumbent. This also seems highly unlikely, given what a large percentage of the electorate this makes up, and how much voting usually breaks down along partisan lines.
Rather, the most likely explanation, and one that is consistent with a good deal of political science research, is that voters’ perception of the how well they are doing depends largely on whether their party is in power. As one study notes: “a robust finding in the literature is that partisans evaluate the economy and its prospects more positively when the president is of their own party, and more negatively when the office is held by someone of the opposing party”
In many ways, this is remarkable. It is not particularly difficult to objectively compare one’s finances from two years ago to today. Yet, somehow having your party in power seems to change your evaluation.
In 2008, 24 percent of voters said their family financial situation was better today, 34 percent the same, and 42 percent worse; In 2010, just 14 percent of voters said their financial situation was better, 43 percent about the same, and 42 percent worse.
(Voters who say their family situation is about the same tend to be split much more evenly between the two parties: In 2008, they went 53-45 percent against the Republicans; In 2010 they actually voted 51-to-46 percent for Democrats)
So the declining economy has reduced the share of the electorate thinking their financial situation has gotten better from 24 percent to 14 percent, and this has hurt the Democrats. This may not be an entirely objective measure, but in a down economy, even partisan subjectivity is only so powerful. This has obviously hurt Obama and the Democrats.
But the larger issue here is that it’s very hard for partisan voters to assess the economy and even their own financial conditions objectively. There are real partisan filters at work here.
Which means that even if things are objectively getting better, there are still a large number of Republican voters who are going to think – in opposition to actual empirical evidence – that their own finances are getting worse, perhaps because they can’t conceive of an economy getting better with a Democratic president in charge. (Though partisan Democrats would be equally guilty in thinking their finances were getting better when they actually weren’t.)
This poses obvious challenges for Obama. If the economy does pick up (as most predict it will), improving objective conditions should help Obama’s approval rating and 2012 prospects to some degree. But even objective improvement will not be enough to convince many voters. Maybe more rhetorical attention to this will help (I don’t know the literature on this in great detail). But even that will probably have limited impact, since most voters hear only what they want to hear (confirmation bias).
A maddening challenge indeed. Good luck, President Obama.
