"When will I get credit....? When will people understand.....? When will Polls reflect the Greatness of America...?"

 During the Biden administration, popular perception of economic conditions was very negative, even though actual conditions weren't bad according to the standard statistics.  Now the Trump administration faces the same problem (my title is a quote from a Trump post on Truth Social).  The Michigan Consumer Surveys report an "Index of Consumer Sentiment" every month, and in the last 20 years or so they have also recorded party identification.  The figure shows the ICS average for supporters of the President's party and the opposition party (omitting the transitional months when party control changes, e. g. Nov 2024-Jan 2025).  

The ups and downs follow a similar pattern, but opposition party perceptions have a downward trend.  The low point for supporters of the president's party was February 2009, when the country was in a severe recession.  For supporters of the opposition party, perceptions have been below the February 2009 levels for most of the past three years.  So to some extent, the negative perceptions just reflect the growth of negative partisanship--supporters of the other party seeing things as very bad rather than pretty bad.  But even today, a lot of people (30%-40%) are not partisans.*  What do they think?  The next figure compares independents' ICS to the average of Democratic and Republican values.

 

The diagonal line means equal values for independents and the average of Democrats and Republicans.  Most points are below the line, meaning that independents are more negative than partisans, presumably because they tend to have more negative views of politics and politicians.  The red dots are the months in the second Trump term:  they tend to be farther below the line, meaning that the gap between independent and partisan perceptions has been consistently larger than average.  The next figure shows changes in the gap over time:

It seemed to bounce around without much pattern until sometime around the middle of 2022--since then, independents have steadily become more negative relative to partisans.  Why?  When economic conditions are ambiguous, independents may be influenced by general impressions about whether the president is paying attention to the economy.  In the last couple of years of his administration, it seemed like Biden was more focused on foreign affairs, and during his second administration the economy hasn't been prominent among Trump's concerns.  There were two earlier months when independent perceptions were unusually negative--April and May 2012.  I don't remember exactly what was in the news then, but I do recall that during the Obama administration there were sometimes complaints that he wasn't focusing on the economy.  Going farther back, in 1992 economic perceptions were more negative than economic statistics suggested they should be.  My hypothesis suggests that tendency should have been particularly strong among independents:  George HW Bush was generally seen as being more interested in foreign affairs than in economics.   

*It drops to about 10%-15% if you ask whether people "lean" towards one party, but the Michigan surveys don't do that.  

It's the same old song

 I recently got an e-mail urging me to contribute a paper to the International Journal of Arts, Humanities & Social Science (IJAHSS).  That name rang a bell--last year I discovered that I was listed as the editor of the EON International Journal of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences.  Was the similarity in names just a coincidence?  I looked at the website for the IJAHSS and it looked a lot like what I remembered of the EIJAHSS--the major change is that there publication fee is up to $300 (previously $200).   They list an "Advisory Board" and an "Editorial Board" and I was relieved to find that I'm not included on either one.  The editor-in-chief is given as Val Dusek, of the Department of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire.  I did a search for him and discovered that he died in May of this year.  I recognized one of the names on the editorial board, Ted Jelen of the University of Nevada Las Vegas.  A search revealed that he died in November 2017, several years before the journal started.  I haven't searched for any of the other people listed as members, but I wonder if there's a strategy there--dead people aren't going to find out and object to the misuse of their names.  

For they/them

 For many people, attachment to a party isn't primarily a matter agreement on specific issues, but a general sense that it's concerned with people like you or that you care about.  From time to time, Gallup has asked "which political party--the Republican or Democratic--do you think serves the interests of the following groups the best."  The most recent was in August 2024, when they asked about wealthy people, business and professional people, military veterans, small business people, retired people, recent immigrants who came to the US legally/recent immigrants who came to the US illegally [random half samples], parents of children under 18, black people, poor people, Hispanic people, women, labor union members and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.  The figure shows breaks opinions down by party.  The horizonal axis shows the percent of Republicans who think that the Republican party best serves the interests of each group:  for example, 57% of Republicans think that the Republicans are best for union members.  The vertical axis gives the percent of Democrats who think that the Democratic party best serves the group:  for example, 88% of Democrats think that the Democrats are best for union members.*

Over 90% of Democrats think that their party is best for LGBT people, women, legal immigrants, Hispanics, retired people, parents, black people, and poor people.  80-90% think that their party is best for small business, veterans, illegal immigrants, and union members.  Then there are two groups that trail:  business and professionals at 56% and wealthy people at 9%.  Among Republicans, only 19% say that their party is best for LGBT people and illegal immigrants; majorities think that the Republicans are best for all other groups, although they're generally not as strong as the majorities among Democrats.  

Eight of these groups were also included in a survey in 1990.  The next two figures show changes in Democratic and Republican perceptions between 1990 and 2024:

The diagonal lines indicate equal values in 1990 and 2024.  Points above the line mean that a higher percentage of partisans saw their party as better for the group in 2024 than in 1990.  For both Democrats and Republicans, seven of the eight are above the line.  This could be interpreted as a general increase in polarization:  strong partisans are more likely to see their party as better for (almost) everyone.  Another potential factor is feelings about the groups:  partisans will want to claim groups that they like and connect the other party to groups that they dislike.  For both Democrats and Republicans, wealthy people are the one exception to the general pattern:  I would interpret this as an example of a general rise of anti-elitist sentiment:  members of both parties are more reluctant to be associated with serving the interests of wealthy people.  A few other cases are notable for large increases between 1990 and 2024:  Republicans became considerably more likely to say that their party was best for black people (33% to 76%) and poor people (39% to 76%).   Again, I would say that this reflects a change in the way that Republicans like to think of themselves.  

*People who say that the parties are equal or who don't know are counted with those who say the other party is better.