Perceptions of the economy, and history's echo.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Who is the economy bad for? My stock portfolio is doing wonderfully, my salary continues to rocket, and I don't know anyone struggling. I just don't understand

I think part of what's going on is a lot of groups have incentive to say the economy is bad, regardless of if they believe or not at a personal level.

-Trump supporters will say the economy just to oppose Biden.

-Those on the far-left will say the economy is bad to try and argue Democrats aren't doing enough and justify many of their massive policy proposals.

-Amongst young people, there's social pressure to say the economy is bad because frankly being a young person is just hard; saying the economy is bad helps make you better connect with others. Also frankly young people do have a lot of valid economic concerns (i.e. housing) that politicians on both sides aren't doing a great job of addressing because the people who vote tend to be older people who have homes.

-Many in media, both news media and social media have incentive to say the economy is bad because that tends to get better engagement.

I think the biggest thing is that Biden voters are probably a lot more willing to admit their true opinion on the economy in a poll regardless of who's President than Trump voters. I think this is for 2 main reasons: firstly Trump voters see the President as more attached to the economy than Biden voters, and secondly, a large faction of Trump voters are just more cultish in nature and will say anything to support Trump at all cost - in this case saying the economy is good/bad is a proxy for supporting Trump.

If the Republican Party continues to lean into Trumpism in the long term, I expect the default to be polling showing more optimism under Republican administrations and vise-versa, for the reasons listed above.

Good points.