Pundits and electoral experts are always claiming that the single greatest factor determining how people vote in a presidential election is the state of the economy, that if the economy is good, the incumbent will be re-elected and that if the economy is bad, he won’t. We’re told over and over again that 2012 is not an election in which people will vote based on social or cultural issues. Yet, while I do agree that, at the margin where it really counts (i.e., the swingy voters in the “swing states”), this is probably true, I’m not sure I believe that MOST people actually do vote based on the state of the economy. Thus, I want to draw a clear distinction between what determines the outcome of a presidential election and what determines how most people vote. It may seem counterintuitive, perhaps, but they aren’t actually the same thing. Follow me below the fold for an explanation.
Allow me to run a couple of hypothetical scenarios to buttress my point.
SCENARIO #1
Let’s say that in 2012 the economy is roaring (from my lips to God’s ears). Let’s assume that the unemployment rate has dropped to 4 points and that the nation has added 10 million jobs since Obama was elected. Does anyone seriously believe that, even under these conditions, the President would carry the states of Utah, Idaho, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi, or come even close to carrying them?
SCENARIO #2
Conversely, let’s say the economy is in actual recession in 2012. The GDP is in negative territory, as are the jobs numbers, and have been for the entire year. Does anyone really believe that the President would therefore lose New York, Hawaii, Vermont and D.C.?
We actually lived through a situation similar to scenario #1 recently: the 2008 election. The economy was shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs a month under a Republican president, yet McCain still carried all those blood-red states that have voted Republican for decades now, some of them by wide margins.
So there must be something far more compelling than the economy determining how many if not most people vote in a presidential election. Is it social/cultural issues or is it political ideology that makes people vote consistently red or blue despite the varying state of the economy?
Now, I realize that one might argue that the economic conditions of individual states vary both from one another and from the nation as a whole. But for that to be a compelling argument one would have to show a consistent pattern in which states performing well vote as a bloc for the incumbent and those performing poorly vote for the challenger. But that has never been the case (it certainly wasn’t in 2008).
To reiterate, I’m not talking here about the overall OUTCOME of the election, which probably IS greatly influenced by the state of the economy, thanks, primarily, to the independent voters in the swing states. I’m talking about what motivates the vast majority of voters on an individual basis when they go to the polls. In fact, I’ll use myself as an example. Even if we were in a Scenario #2-type situation (or worse), I would never in a million years vote for Romney over Obama, mainly because I find everything Romney stands for to be utterly repugnant to my core values and beliefs as a person.
If the vast majority of the public voted mainly on the state of the economy, virtually ALL the states would vote for the incumbent in good times and against the incumbent in bad times. Yet, we just don't find that to be the case.
Any thoughts?