I couldn't resist

 As I mentioned in my last post, I have a number of new posts planned (dealing with confidence in institutions and the relation between college education and politics), but this isn't one of them.  A few days ago, a New York Times op-ed by Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner mentioned a Gallup question that goes back to the 1940s:  "looking ahead for the next few years, which political party do you think will do a better job of keeping the country prosperous — the Republican Party or the Democratic Party?"  and I couldn't resist taking a closer look.  The difference between percent saying Democrats and percent saying Republicans:

Rauch and Wehner say "In the post-World War II period, Democrats — still remembered for ending the Great Depression — held a seemingly impregnable prosperity advantage, forcing Republicans to fight every national election uphill."  That had been my impression too, but I'm not sure that the figure bears it out.  In the 1940s and 1950s, the parties were about even.  The Democrats pulled ahead after the recession of 1958, and built their lead in the Kennedy-Johnson administration, but those changes could plausibly be explained as a reaction to short-term economic conditions.  On the other hand, the Republicans never managed to get more than a small lead, so maybe the public did have a tendency to favor the Democrats after taking account of current conditions.  But since the late 1970s, it's been close, as Rauch and Wehner point out.  Also, there seems to have been less variation over time:    between 1964 and 1968, it went from +41 for the Democrats to +2, and between 1972 and 1974 from -5 to +30.  In the last 25 years, the range has been from -14 to +20).    That's probably a reflection of the growing strength of partisanship--people are more likely to say that their party is better, regardless of current conditions.  A possibly related point is that the number of people who name a party (rather than saying that they're both the same or that they don't know which would be better) has increased:  

That may be influenced by changes in interviewing techniques, but the shift has been so large and steady that it seems likely that there's an underlying change in propensity to choose a party--that is, a decline in the number of real independents.  Finally, in recent years, Republicans have had an advantage:  they've led in 13 of the last 15 surveys.  

[Some data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]