Is the economy mattering less and less as a key predictor of political success?

[Matty]

In 2012, based on the economy, history should tell us that Obama shouldn't have won as relatively easily as he did. In 2016, history tells us that an improving economy should keep the incumbent party in power. That didn't happen.

History also tells us that a president who is currently experiencing a relatively healthy economy (trump) shouldn't have a 60% disapproval rate.

Is this the new normal? It's also happening in other countries. In the UK, pure economic reasoning said brexit shouldn't have won. Pure economic reasoning also says PM May should have done better in the recent snap election, considering the UK economy is healthy at the moment.

Is the famous phrase "it's the economy, stupid" going the way of the whigs?

[Yank2133]

I am not so sure about this.

Obama won in 2012 for the same reason Reagan won in 1984. The economy may not have been booming, but it was much better then where it had been in 2009.

2016 was unique because it has historically been hard for the incumbent party to win three straight presidential elections. We saw this in 2000, popular outgoing democratic president and healthy economy, and yet the democrat lost a close one.

Trump is unique due to the Russia stuff and his gross incompetence. Rubio and Jeb! would be hovering around 50%+ if they were president.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     In the age of hyperpartisanship, more and more people will read what they want into the health of the economy in order to advance their own ends, and are guided in so doing by those whose opinions they trust (and these people are very often politically motivated). This tendency to judge economic health based on what is politically convenient partially disarms it as a sorting factor.

[Virginiá]

WaPo had something last year on how the economy seems to matter little to how non-white voters make their choices, but it is still relevant with white voters. I don't know where I put the link, but I'm sure it is in my posting history.

[Technocracy Timmy]

It mattered to a very important subset of voters.

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[MarkD]

Yes, it's becoming less and less significant. There's been a gradual increase in the significance of the Supreme Court's rulings -- public backlash against unpopular decisions by the Court. Look at the states which legalized gay marriage on their own, before Obergefell. Did those states vote for Clinton or Trump? Look at the states in which the federal courts legalized gay marriage, before Windsor. Did those states vote for Clinton or Trump?
Do you like it when the Supreme Court strikes down the laws you voted for?

[Mr. Smith]

More like the economy is different in different parts, and more and more as things become polarized, more and more do politicians just pick and choose whom to prop up, and therefore if all important parts of the base are propped, they can say, things are up.

[SingingAnalyst]

In the long run, yes. 2012 and 2016 were similar to 1964 and 1968 as to the state of the economy and the election results. On the whole I believe people are less likely than in the past to believe that the party affiliation of the President affects how well the economy does.

[The Self]

This isn't Trump's economy. This is still the Obama economy.

[pbrower2a]

In 2012, based on the economy, history should tell us that Obama shouldn't have won as relatively easily as he did. In 2016, history tells us that an improving economy should keep the incumbent party in power. That didn't happen.

Republicans still took a licking in 1934, and FDR won in a landslide in 1936, even though America was still stuck in the Great Depression. People remembered how bad things were in 1932 and 1933, and they were going to give FDR plenty of opportunity to achieve his agenda but completely unready to give the Republicans the brake on any escape from the Depression.  Not until 1938, when things were unambiguously better than they had been in 1932, did Republicans make significant inroads into Congress.  Republicans may be more capable of making gains when economic improvement under Democrats in hard times have started but are (as usually happens) uneven, as in 2010.

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We can see causes other than the economy for the low approval numbers.  The President sold out many of his voters on behalf of the moneyed elites for whom he was not the first choice. The populist demagogue reverted to the class interests that one expects of a  rentier who gets some of the easiest income possible (exorbitant rentals) and insists that his class not be taxed on their easy money.  He has proved himself a thoroughly-nasty person.

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The economy is important, but it isn't everything. At that, perceptions of the economy matter far more. 

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No, it is obviously not contemporaneous to the Whigs. Plenty of other things can hurt a Presidency, like personal scandals, wars going badly, the bungling of natural disasters... 'Dolt 45' is simply an awful President, and I can't see anything going well with him as President. The economy has yet to falter, and his dream of an America in which about 2% live like aristocrats and 95% of American live as peons  will make any measure of GDP per capita irrelevant.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Pure economic reasoning also says PM May should have done better in the recent snap election, considering the UK economy is healthy at the moment.

Er, no. The vote was almost more than anything a verdict on 7 years of a stuttering economy under Conservative government.