Is Economic Anxiety Bipartisan?
The Atlantic’s Chris Good says that it is:
Gallup released findings today on economic confidence by state, and it appears anxiety doesn’t give a clear partisan edge one way or the other.
Conventional wisdom says that an improved, or improving, economy is good for President Obama and Democrats, while economic anxiety is bad for the president’s party. Of the 10 states with the highest confidence ratings, five voted for Obama in ‘08 and five voted for John McCain; of the 10 states with the least confidence in the economy, six voted for Obama and four for McCain.
Five minutes later, the commenter “jennis psycho” said:
Your thesis does not follow from the data you cite.
And jennis psycho is correct. Good falls prey to our old friend, the ecological fallacy.
Better data is actually sitting immediately to the right of Good’s blog post: the ABC/WP consumer confidence index. You click on that link, then you click on the pdf in the ABC story.
Here is the consumer confidence rating of the three partisan groups (no word on how independent leaners were classified, but I am guessing they were classified as independents):
Republicans: -46
Democrats: -51
Independents: -49
So the difference here are small — especially compared to the differences across income groups, where consumer confidence ranges from -75 among those making $15,000 or less to -6 among those making $100,000 or more. It appears that a lack of consumer confidence is bipartisan.
But the most recent numbers obscure an important trend that indicates partisanship is at work. If you compare Democrats now to one year ago, their consumer confidence has improved by 10 points. But Republicans’ confidence has declined by 12 points. A year ago, Democrats were 27 points “less confident” than Republicans. Now they are 5 points less confident. Independents, meanwhile, are virtually unchanged.
A while back, Andy and I wrote up this basic finding and a number of others under the heading “Red and Blue Economies. The broader point is this. Even if Republican and Democrats currently have similar views of the economy — “bipartisanship,” in Good’s terminology — partisan bias may still be at work.
Comments
I think you are misunderstanding Good. He is not claiming that Democrats and Republicans have equal levels of anxiety. I believe he is claiming that levels of anxiety do not predict the electoral fortunes of incumbent party. That is the natural interpretation given his characterization of the conventional wisdom. If so, he is guilty of more than just the ecological fallacy: he is using 2009 confidence figures to predict 2008 votes.
Posted by: KenS | February 8, 2010 08:12 PM
KenS: Point taken, although the title of the post certainly confuses things. Now that I re-read it, I can’t really tell what Good’s point is. That economic anxiety should be lower in blue states but higher in red ones and, if not, the economy somehow isn’t affecting Obama’s fortunes?
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