Here’s the problem: Unemployment numbers tell us basically nothing about whether the party in power can retain the White House, especially this far out from Election Day. Here’s the raw data:
There’s no pattern here. Sometimes, the economy hums along for almost a whole presidential term – only to crash before an election and sink a seemingly invincible candidate. In other election cycles, the president struggles with high unemployment for years, and a turnaround arrives just in time to lift him to reelection.
The unemployment rate becomes slightly more predictive of who will win the presidency closer to Election Day. But it’s still not great.
Sure, in some moments of high unemployment — like the Great Recession of 2008 — control of the White House shifted away from the president’s party. But four years later, when employment was still at 8 percent, Barack Obama won a second term.
And a good economy doesn’t guarantee victory for the president’s party in the next presidential election, either: George W. Bush won the White House after eight years of mostly solid economic performance by Bill Clinton.
The best way for Biden to keep the White House: Stay on the right side of short-term, broad-based economic trends. Swing voters don’t pick a candidate by looking up unemployment numbers on their phone. They think about the real economy that they experience every day — which includes inflation, growth, take-home pay, stocks and unemployment — as well as intangibles such as each candidate’s personality. When voters do think about the economy, they tend to think about trends. Voters forgave Obama for high unemployment in part because the overall economy was improving.
That’s why the most successful election forecasts use a blend of economic factors, focus on short-term change, and add in data from polls and other sources. One number — even one as important as the unemployment rate — can’t capture how voters feel about something as complicated as the economy or an election.
Biden can still feel good about his unemployment numbers. They represent legitimate economic success. But if he wants to win reelection, historic unemployment rates likely won’t be good enough on their own.
