We are OK when our guy is in office; things are terrible with the other guy

It is hardly a surprise that Americans see the country through profoundly strong partisan lenses. Republicans think things are going well with a Republican in the White House, and Democrats do the same when a Democrat is in the Oval Office. But there has been a shift over the last 20 years in how deeply negative we’ve become when the other party is in power. That wasn’t so true in the Clinton years and in the first term of George W. Bush, or earlier.

This chart shows data from Pew on satisfaction with how things are going in the country. The partisan differences are obvious and change abruptly with changes in the presidency. A minor note is also that the change happens immediately after the election, without waiting for the inauguration to actually install the new president.

The partisan effect is very clear. The thing I want to point out is how this changed in Bush’s second term and how very low and very flat satisfaction has been among the out-party in the Obama, Trump 1, Biden and Trump 2 years.

In the Clinton years, satisfaction was higher with Democrats than Republicans, but the lines move in parallel though the 8 years Clinton was in office. In the second term Republican satisfaction was higher than it had been for Democrats in the first term. 

In Bush’s first term Democratic satisfaction fell from the Clinton years but remained well above 20% until late in the first term, then stayed in the teens throughout the second term. In part that reflected the spike following 9/11 but satisfaction declined relatively slowly through the first term. GOP satisfaction remained high in the first term. In the second term, Republicans reacted to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and the onset of the Great Recession with a substantial decline in their satisfaction.

In each administration since Bush, the out-party had held satisfaction in the teens throughout, regardless of what happened during the administration. Nothing Obama did, or regardless of events during his term, Republican satisfaction remained in the low teens. For Trump’s first term, Democrats remained in the low teens, and for Biden Republican satisfaction always held at about 10%. Now in Trump 2 it is the Democrats turn to be extremely dissatisfied.

This suggests that in the Clinton years and first four years of Bush, there was some common response across party lines to national conditions. The out-party was less satisfied than the in-party, but both moved together up or down. That broke down in Bush’s second term and has never returned since.

The in-party does show some meaningful variation, with Democratic satisfaction rising through Obama’s two terms, as the economy recovered from the Great Recession, and Republican satisfaction drops with the Covid pandemic. In Biden’s term, initially high Democratic satisfaction declined as inflation rose in late 2021 through 2022, recovering only modestly. And so far in Trump 2 GOP satisfaction is high but has been trending down. None of this moved the out-party in those administrations.

V.O. Key’s classic The Responsible Electorate argued voters were not perfectly informed rational actors, steeped in policy, but instead were “not fools”. Voters, Key said, rewarded good performance and punished bad performance. The modern trends shown here since 2009 (and perhaps since 2006) show that for the out-party there is no reward, only stolid unhappiness. That leaves independents, perhaps, to respond to performance, and the in-party can express disappointment, but a major chunk of the electorate is no longer offering any rewards.

The picture is not quite so bleak if we turn from the direction of the country to reactions to the economy. Here too there are large in-party vs out-party differences, but a bit more parallel movement even in recent administrations.

The University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment is a monthly measure of economic perceptions of the current and future economy. Their data by party is only available since 2006 so offers no details of the Clinton administration or the first term of Bush, but the data otherwise gives a good look during the recent period when satisfaction with the direction of the country has remained at rock bottom among out-partisans.

As with satisfaction, there are large partisan differences, and these change abruptly with each change in administration, as does satisfaction. It is notable that no “real” economic conditions change this abruptly on Election Day or on Inauguration Day, so this is a good measure of how powerfully partisanship distorts our perception of “reality.” It is also clear that these shifts begin before the new president takes office. 

What is a bit different here, however, is that the partisan lines (and independents too) continue to move in rough parallel across all these administrations, while satisfaction stopped doing that in 2006 or so. The late Bush second term, when these data begin, shows parallel declines. Through Obama’s two terms all partisans showed increasing sentiment. In the pre-Covid Trump 1 term, the lines are each fairly flat and relatively high, then when Covid arrives all show a sharp drop. In Biden’s term Democrats, independents and Republicans all become more negative about the economy as inflation rises to its peak in June 2022, then all three groups become more positive in most of the remainder of Biden’s term. With Trump 2 so far, independents and Democrats are quite negative while Republicans have remained quite positive, which violates the general parallelism earlier.

This economic data shows that Key’s electorate as the god of reward and punishment may not be dead, at least with respect to the economy. All do seem to respond in similar ways though at different levels. Whether this translates into votes is a topic for another day, but similar responsiveness is a precondition for exacting reward or punishment.

It may be that questions about satisfaction with how things are going in the country are simply so saturated by politics now that they elicit a more explicitly partisan response than was the case in the 1990s and before. A similar trend holds for the “right direction or wrong track” question, a favorite of political pollsters who held it to be a great indicator of whether an administration was in good shape or bad shape. With large majorities saying “wrong track” for administrations since Bush, we see the same out-party nearly all saying wrong track and large partisan divides.

As political division has overrun broader considerations of what it means to be “satisfied with the direction of the country”, we are deeply divided indeed. The remaining responsiveness to economic conditions at least suggests the public may yet respond to good or bad times, if less so that they did in Key’s day, or in the late 1900s. For the 2000s, that responsiveness is at least lessened by universal disapprobation by the out-party.

(Thanks to Pew for making the satisfaction data available. See their report on the sour mood of the country here.)