We Democrats think it’s nuts. How could voters imagine the Trump economy was better than the Biden economy?
But there’s little question that’s how Americans currently see it. A CBS/YouGov survey in March found 65 percent saying the economy was good under Donald Trump, but only 38 percent said the economy has been good under President Biden.
Given the facts, Democrats lament, “how can that possibly be the case? People just aren’t remembering correctly.”
There’s a lot of partisan cheerleading in those numbers, but the economic gap reflected here is far larger than the nation’s partisan difference.
Uncovering the sources of this disjuncture requires separating perception from reality and recognizing there are multiple measures of reality which tell different stories.
During the pre-COVID-19 portion of Trump’s term, voters did see the economy in a positive light compared to today. But let’s put that in context.
The Great Recession at the end of George W. Bush’s presidency brought the economy to its knees. Public perceptions of the economy’s health plummeted.
President Obama righted the ship, and Americans’ assessments of the economy........