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Republican hysteria over the economy has reached record levels

The latest edition of the Survey of Consumer Sentiment is out, and it shows that Republicans have doubled down on their hysteria over the economy:

At the start of the pandemic, everyone naturally became pessimistic about the economy. But after a few months, as assistance started to roll out, sentiment stabilized.

Until November 3rd. Sentiment among Democrats had already been going up, and it continued rising until the middle of 2021, when it took a modest downward dip.

But Republicans went cuckoo when Donald Trump lost the presidential election. Consumer sentiment plummeted, and kept plummeting for over a year. In November it came in at 37.2, the lowest it's ever registered.

By far the lowest. Lower than the 1980 Carter recession (55.1) and lower than the Great Recession (48.3).

This is nuts, given the extensive real-world evidence that the economy is in pretty good shape. It only makes sense if you've been repeatedly hammered over the head that deficits and inflation are the only things that matter and they're all set to crush the economy any day now.

But where would anyone get that idea?

51 thoughts on “Republican hysteria over the economy has reached record levels

  1. sat3911

    Devil's advocate question: is the economy worse in heavily Republican areas? A poll that compared poor rural republicans from Mississippi vs SF tech democrats could have a very different result than suburban Dallas republicans vs poor rural democrats from Mississippi.

      1. bethby30

        Not if the intent of the poll was to compare the economies of those two types of areas and that intent was made clear. That is a common thing for pollsters to do.

  2. Justin

    Polls all show the same thing. Democrats and republicans hate each other. No other conclusions can be drawn from the data.

    Meanwhile… corporate profits are just fine. Even Walmart!

    “In a difficult retail environment of rising prices and snarled supply chains, Walmart said on Tuesday that its third-quarter sales rose and earnings topped Wall Street’s expectations. The giant retailer reported that its sales in the United States grew 9.2 percent while total revenue rose 4.3 percent to $140.5 billion.”

    And my personal savings / IRA? Never been better.

    The economy is fine, but the country is a disaster area.

  3. rational thought

    And I guess then you could say that democrats " went cuckoo " when Clinton lost in 2016 because sure looks like democratic opinion of the economy went way down then for no good reason .

    And I wonder where they got that idea too?

    I would tend to characterize it more as democrats reacting to trump and Republicans reacting to biden , because I think it has more to do with fear of the other party than confidence in yours. And note that in both 2016 and 2020, there was a change to unified control of the presidency and congress, which was generally unexpected. That will provoke a larger shift in partisan expectations.

    And yes, the partisan split has become more extreme and bleeds into everything.

    1. KenSchulz

      “No good reason?” The winning candidate had bankrupted multiple businesses and believed multiple economic fallacies, including lump-of-labor and zero-sum. And the Republicans’ favorite fairy tale, that tax cuts pay for themselves.

    2. pflash

      I think Kevin is drawing attention to the magnitude of the red partisan effect. The red dip in '20 is 3x the blue dip in '16. And it's at its lowest ever while looking to go lower still.

      1. rational thought

        No.

        The partisan change always happens right away after the election and stays that way . The immediate post election dip by Republicans and rise for democrats is roughly the same magnitude as 2016. But , thus year, there has been a further decline among BOTH democrats and Republicans. Cannot blame partisanship for that .

          1. ScentOfViolets

            Hah! Good one. The guy (the handle alone tells you it's of the male persusasion) is a walking public health poster for why not to engage in motivated reasoning.

        1. Jerry O'Brien

          I also thought at first that the reactions were not the same, but it's wrong to count the further decline in recent months as part of the 2020 election reaction. Look, in early 2021, Democratic attitudes turn sharply down, almost matching the Republican decline after that point. There is no big partisan divide in the trend there.

          Just try looking at the few months from just before the election to just after Inauguration day, both in 2016 and 2020. These periods showed similar crossovers in the chart.

    3. rational thought

      OK, I should clarify but basically you are making my point.

      No good reason based on what the economy is actually doing AT THE TIME. All of the things you listed are reasons why a Democrat could have had a rational reason ( whether correct or not ) for EXPECTING trump to screw up the economy in the future. But not that the economy actually is bad .

      And those democratic numbers stayed low all four trump years when , objectively, the economy was doing quite well. No introspection saying " well I had good reason to think trump would be an economic disaster but it has not been ".

      Why all the things you listed were either not true or did not have the effect of the expected messing up the economy is a different issue .

      And , after biden was elected, many Republicans expectations of the future economy went down , because they expected democratic policies to mess things up . Of course , because if they thought democratic policies were good, they would not be Republicans.

      All you are arguing is basically that Republicans are wrong about the economy because you do not agree with republican economic policies. So no reason to nor expect Republicans to feel the same..

      1. Jerry O'Brien

        Trump did remain an unsettling figure. He left the economy overall in the hands of establishment types, which was not disastrous, but his Republican congresses treated us to greater deficit spending at a time when the economy was already strong. Not the thing you're supposed to like if you want the national debt to be well controlled. There were good growth years, but danger seemed to be lurking. So, some of us felt continued unease was warranted. And there were indications of a coming recession in late 2019, before covid-19 struck.

        Now, neither Democrats nor Republicans like high inflation, but Republicans do seem to be taking things exceptionally hard.

      2. KenSchulz

        Here is the survey:
        https://data.sca.isr.umich.edu/fetchdoc.php?docid=24776
        Questions are retrospective, prospective, and contemporaneous, spanning plus/minus five years, with a question about respondent’s eventual retirement also.
        Re-read your comment. You imply that Democrats should have answered only on the basis of conditions at the time, while Republicans could answer on the basis of their expectations.
        I suggest you might think more, and write less.

        1. ScentOfViolets

          No fair! You're ganging up an Rashy! All kidding aside, it's people like this poster that makes the necessity of redesigning the public school curriculum from the ground up a slam dunk.

          Yeah, these days, any fool can do the most cursory of google searches to find documents that back up their theses. But that's not a terribly useful skill now, is it? Nothing new under the Sun of course; even the Devil can quote scripture had some currency as a catch phrase back in the day.

      1. rational thought

        Nope .

        I am blaming democrats for doing the same thing that kevin is accusing Republicans of . But I am not excusing Republicans for that .

        Both sides have gotten so partisan that, for many, any question on any poll is answered based on the answer that makes your party look good and the other party bad. And reality has no role . Even to the extent of their own personal actions like whether they were vaccinated ( some Republicans who were vaccinated say they are not and vice versa ).

        And better illustrated by a poll directly of current economic conditions like are we in a recession. There was a sizable % age of democrats answering that we were all through the trump administration although absolutely clear that was not true.

        Not as fair a criticism re consumer confidence as that can be based on future expectations and valid that you base that on whether you think new policies are bad or good ..

    4. antiscience

      What rubbish. I was there, I remember. Hell, Kevin documented it *copiously*. What happened was:

      1. GrOPers bitched and moaned that the economy sucked until Shitler got elected; then they switched to extolling the great, great economy, even though .... (wait for it)
      2. Lots of analysts (including Kevin) noted that the economy was on the same basic trend that had been established by the Obama administration, and that was an upward trend.

      Analysts pointing out that Shitler should get no credit for just not fucking up with Obama had built, were legion. And Dems pretty much agreed with that.

      3. And then, well, Shitler went and fucked it up. B/c (again as was reported around the time) the economy was already starting to tilt into recession, just at the beginning of the pandemic.

      This idea that somehow Dems' views of the economy are politically biased like GrOPers' are, is 100% bullshit.

      1. rational thought

        Taking as a given that the economy was basically the same under trump as under Obama , then , if your theory is right that democrats are not politically biased in the same way as Republicans, then we would see in Kevin's graph above that Republicans opinions went unjustifiable higher when trump was elected, while democrats opinions stayed the same.

        1. rational thought

          But you see that democrats shifted with Republicans in the opposite direction .

          Which is the way it always has been.

          Of course you will argue as Ken did that the reasons for expecting the economy to fail under trump ( while it actually did not) were 100% valid while the reasons that Republicans had confidence in trump were wrong.

          But that is just saying that , as a Democrat, you think trump is bad and so should republicans.

          If you want to argue that republican beliefs are wrong, go ahead. But to also insist that Republicans are unable to accept reality as a concept just because they do not agree with you on reality is silly.

          The whole thing rests on your belief that your political side is correct. Which is always true and should of course be the same for both sides .

          1. KenSchulz

            That is not what I said. I said that several of Trump’s beliefs about how the economy works are fallacious. I cited zero-sum and lump-of-labor, which are empirically false (productivity gains are a real thing; and population growth including immigration add to the demand for labor as well as to its supply, because workers are also consumers).

          1. bethby30

            Clearly you are a troll but for other readers, the top unemployment rate under Obama can be found here. It was around 10% in his first year. That happened because of the horrific international economic crash that happened under Bush.
            Before the end of O’Bama’s first year the rate was already dropping and kept steadily dropping for the rest of his 8 years. The trend continued under Trump.

            https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2020/10/23/a-chart-of-unemployment-under-trump-and-obama-tells-quite-a-tale-column/

            1. Vog46

              bethby-
              I beleive Monty was being MORE than a little snarky.

              Besides CNBC was touting that the REAL UI number was far higher than being reported

  4. KawSunflower

    What can we expect? Following an award from CNBC 2 years in a row for its business record, Virginia's revenues were excellent when Youngkin promoted the lie that its economy was "in the ditch."

    That's when his tone changed from unity because "party doesn't matter," to "the future is ours, not theirs" & then book banning & dog whistles.

    He's now on his victory lap, promising a tax reduction (after originally announcing his desire to abolish the state income tax!) with the surplus from the administration of Ralph Northam, whose religious faith he insulted.

    Wonder where he's planning to distribute any remaining available funds.

    After 4 reasonable Democratic governors & progress, we get this retro man. The "Republicans" can lie about anything & everything now with impunity.

    1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      So, Glenn Yungkins repeating the errors of Jesse Ventura in Minnesota & Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, giving out a universal tax refund to draw down the state's overly zealous & confiscatory taxation surplus.

      Can't wait til the commonwealth's economy is actually in the ditch, at which point Yungkins will have no margin for error (other than to cut teh welfare).

    1. rational thought

      That is the type of poorly constructed poll question that is hard to parse.

      If you took it as a choice between poor growth with low inflation and higher growth with high inflation PERMANENTLY, the latter choice seems clearly better and most would choose that .

      But, based somewhat on experience and more on media characterizations drummed into their head over years, the choice made was really between

      A) lower sustainable growth now with low inflation

      B) higher growth now with high inflation followed by an inevitable crash and negative growth to get inflation under control.

      And it is that former choice that most were making.

      I do question, to some extent but not completely, that sort of direct correlation.

      And what is often missed is that the inflation rate per se may not be as big an issue as its direction and whether it is feeding on itself.

      A consistent 10% inflation each year that stays at 10% , with interest rates and expectations, and money velocity , being based on that consistent expectation,, is not that big a problem . But a current rate of 6%, when that is a big change from prior expectations of 4%, might be.

      But interesting that inflations danger can be controlled if it is consistent and predictable . But that also negates its benefits as an economic " lubricant "

      One inflation advantage, which is what a lot of Keynesian economics is based on , that it is easier to have real wages and prices to a lesser extent, go down in real terms by inflation, than it is to actually cut someone's nominal pay. So, if the free market wage or price really does need to go down due to economic reality, it allows that and avoids a recession, or bigger one, due to stickiness of wages and prices.

      But a predictable inflation just gets built into expectations and not getting a 10% raise in nominal pay each year is perceived like a pay cut .

  5. cld

    This is simply yet more evidence that you pollsters should exclude all conservative responses from opinion surveys, because every single conservative views answering such questions as their big opportunity for a partisan attack.

    Conservatives are not honest, they're not serious, there is no point in asking them anything, you already know the answer.

  6. Spadesofgrey

    Then care less about useless polls. The Michigan survey sucked in the 00's as well while consumers spent like drunks.

  7. akapneogy

    "By far the lowest. Lower than Carter recession (55.1) and lower than the Great Recession (48.3)."

    Republican political resentment masquerading as consumer sentiment.

      1. ScentOfViolets

        Bottom's up, Shootie. No no, not yours! Jesus, how much have you drank already? And why in the world would you think that's what I meant?

    1. bethby30

      I blame the mainstream “liberal” media at least as much as Republicans. Far too many of them have been parroting right wing talking points about debt— especially as regards the costs of the BBB bill — and inflation.
      Most of the media completely ignored this recent story:

      “… the Treasury Department estimates that the bill will raise over $2 trillion. Given the $1.7 trillion price tag, that means the bill would decrease the deficit.”
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/04/democrats-in-array/

      The Treasury Department estimates that the BBB bill’s pay-for provisions of increased taxes, increased tax collection and negotiating lower drug prices will actually DECREASE THE DEFICIT! I think that is proof that the media is aiding and abetting Republicans.

  8. spatrick

    I think it was Digby which posted that there's evidence that inflation and bad economics may be biting more GOP or GOP-leaning voters. Obiviously if you live in a rural area, drive long distances and gas prices are high, you're not going to like that. Most small business owners tend to be Republican. Apparently the Great Resignation is hitting small business (presumably restaurants) more so than big business so you're not going like that. If you work in the oil patch, but the local oil company doesn't want to drill on unused, leased land despite high prices because the banks aren't lending them money to do so, you're not going to like that either.

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