Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for the presidency, has an economy problem. Voters overwhelmingly expect the economy to be a top issue in November and, by a 7-point margin, trust Republicans more than Democrats to handle the issue.
This is a problem, but it is a perception problem, not a true problem. People proceed as they perceive, so this false notion is real in its consequences and, therefore, a problem for VP Harris’ campaign.
The data say that Democrats are better than Republicans for the U.S. economy. The problem is this misperception.
The problem for Harris and democracy-loving citizens is a problematic quirk of the Democratic party. Democratic party leaders tend not to tell citizens what they have done and what they are doing for the country, except maybe in elections, while Republicans tend to talk about their positions and their triumphs all along. Sometimes, they lie, like with the economy. But who can blame them? They are just filling in the blanks the Democrats leave.
Take, for example, Medicare. There is the familiar quote from all too many senior citizens, “Keep government hands off my Medicare!” Many do not know that Medicare is a government program created in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats in Congress. The majority of Congressional Republicans voted against the bill. Republicans don’t broadcast this fact, but Democrats should.
First, the data. The economy has boomed under Biden. During Trump’s first three years (before COVID), the economy created only 6.5 million jobs. During Biden’s first three years (2021-2023), the economy created 14.5 million jobs.
Looking at the average number of jobs created each year of a presidential term, Biden has created more than twice the number of jobs created by any president since and including Jimmy Carter. Perhaps surprising to many citizens, Biden is continuing the record of previous Democratic presidents.
Democratic presidents Biden, Clinton, Carter, and Obama created many more jobs per month than any of the four Republican presidents during that period.
Let’s look at a broad range of data from a more extended period.
In 2016, two economists showed the same trend in an article in the American Economic Review, one of the nation’s oldest and most respected scholarly journals in economics:
“The U.S. economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance. For many measures, including real GDP growth (our focus), the performance gap is large and significant.”
This past April, the Economic Policy Institute issued a report comparing the economy’s performance during Democratic and Republican presidential administrations. The report showed that the economy performed much better during Democratic administrations than during Republican ones.
They summarized their key findings:
“Since 1949, there has been a Democratic advantage in the average performance of key macroeconomic indicators measuring economic health, including:
- Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth
- Job growth
- Unemployment rate
- Growth in inflation – adjusted wages
- Growth of market-based incomes per capita
- Inflation
- Interest rates
This Democratic advantage is across all variables we measure but strongest in private-sector outcomes—notably, business investment, job growth, and the growth of market-based incomes.
Household income growth (adjusted for inflation) was faster on average and far more equal during Democratic administrations, and the Democratic advantage shows up for every group.”
But the public thinks Republicans do better with the economy. The common viewpoint is that Republicans are good for business, which is good for the economy. Republican policies are expected to create a robust, healthy, growing economy. Meanwhile, the standard view of Democratic policies is that they favor regulation and higher taxes, which are bad for the economy. But the data say otherwise. Democrats are consistently better for the economy.
The main problem here is that the Democrats do not seem to understand that establishing a fact before a campaign season if there is such a thing, is better than trying to introduce it during campaigns. People are less likely to believe you if you introduce a fact during election time. If you want people to know something, you must tell them all along.
