More data show erosion of a Republican advantage on the economy
One of the remarkable aspects of the 2020 election is its stability. It has been a year of extraordinary turbulence and disruption, yet for all of that shaking, the presidential contest remains largely unmoved.
That has meant, among other things, that even as the economy sank and then began crawling back up, President Trump didn’t pay much of a political cost. On Thursday, we looked at data from the Economist and YouGov tracking views of the economy and the presidential race over time. Even as confidence in the economy dropped in the spring, approval of Trump’s handling of the economy didn’t budge.
Over the course of the year, his position against former vice president Joe Biden hasn’t really moved — nor has his narrow advantage over Biden when YouGov asked how the economy would fare under either candidate.
That said, it was once the case that Trump’s advantage on the economy was robust in a way that current polling doesn’t reflect. One metric, published by Gallup on Friday, evaluated the extent to which Americans saw one party or the other as being more capable of keeping the United States prosperous. Since 2012, Republicans held an advantage on that question each year — until 2020. Now, Democrats hold a narrow advantage (read: functionally equivalent) on that question.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/25/more-data-show-erosion-republican-advantage-economy/