Matt Yglesias

Bad Timing

In his recent book, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age Larry Bartels persuasively argues that macroeconomic performance is better under Democratic Presidents than under Republicans ones. So how do Republicans win? He cites several factors, but one of the most important is timing — Republicans have tended to produce decent economic performance in election years, and election year economic performance seems to be the only kind of performance that impacts public opinion. But John McCain’s timing isn’t so good, and the scary economic headlines are correlating with a huge boost for Barack Obama in the polls:

I heard some talk last night on cable to the effect that foreign crisis drives voters to the GOP whereas economic crisis drives voters to the Democrats. I don’t think that’s actually true of the economy — rather, bad economic performance is bad for the incumbent party and good for challengers.

17 Responses to “Bad Timing”

1. gregor Says:
   September 24th, 2008 at 8:57 am

   the recovery of the lead is obviously astounding. one hopes that it’s not an outlier.

2. kid bitzer Says:
   September 24th, 2008 at 9:05 am

   “Republicans have tended to produce decent economic performance in election years”

   but wouldn’t the more accurate statement here be:

   “greenspan and volker before him were in the tank for the republicans”?

   the fed can *always* engineer a short-term boost. and has done.

   and is trying to do.

3. steve duncan Says:
   September 24th, 2008 at 9:11 am

   Republicans may or may not earnestly want the Presidency. Certainly the next few years are promising to be painful in many ways. The White House could be a dangerous place to ply your trade. Assuming they do very much want to win, maybe even desperately want victory, a calamity on the international stage is required. Or possibly a tragic domestic event with international implications. Something like the invasion of Georgia won’t cut it. What would? How to carry McCain across the finish line? Killing bin Laden might do it but then again maybe not. Bush has people capable of pulling off black bag operations. For example much is rumored of prisons around the world being ferried persons for torture and detention yet Bush’s fingerprints on the operation have proven elusive. Could he pull off something spectacular, say dropping the Golden Gate Bridge into the harbor during rush hour? Then parading the requisite perps for the nightly news before they go back to some black hole in Chechnya? They might even gladly “confess” if promised three squares and no more electrodes on their testicles. A big event in October would not be the least bit surprising. It looks like McCain is going to need it. He might even express his gratitude with a few pardons here and there. Like Ford before him, these are perilous, troubled times and we can’t be distracted with a witch hunt at the start of a new administration, can we? The prime time speech is probably already written.

4. Heidi Renee Says:
   September 24th, 2008 at 9:59 am

   Oh, just wait – the October surprise will be a “red alert” terrorist threat waiting to happen. It’s their ace in the hole and we all should be prepared for it’s coming as it’s all they have left.

5. DTM Says:
   September 24th, 2008 at 10:18 am

   As an aside, I wish people like Matt would cite only to reasonable aggregations of polls (available from entities like Pollster and RealClearPolitics) rather than any given poll when discussing overall trends. I know lots of people in the media do this, but it makes us dumber.

6. Matt the Engineer Says:
   September 24th, 2008 at 2:52 pm

   I think Gallup is about as respectable as you get for polling, and it seems to follow Matt’s numbers nicely (the two sites you listed aren’t great for time-based analysis).

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