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  • In some polls I've seen before the election, the top item for people -- this is in general, not a specific demographic -- who said that they would vote for Trump was the economy.

    But you can break that down more than "economy". "Economy" can mean a lot of things. How the stock market is doing. Unemployment. Inflation.

    And when people were asked about that, in the polling data I saw, prices were the top concern.

    I commented well before the election and pointed out that inflation is extremely unpopular with publics. In a study -- and this is an old one, but apparently a well known one -- that looked at the public in Germany, the US, and Brazil, the public -- and particularly in Germany and the US -- said that they'd rather have a recession than inflation. That is significant, because in contrast, the mainstream economic position is that it's preferable for a country to have inflation than a recession.

    I also listened to some interviews of people voting Trump, and a lot of people said "I was better-off under Trump than Biden".

    My guess is that you can probably chalk a considerable amount of this up to:

    • Not understanding that inflationary policies weren't simply adopted in isolation, but to avoid a recession resulting from COVID-19.
    • Not knowing that it's normally considered that inflationary policy is preferable to a recession.
    • Not knowing that the Trump administration also adopted inflationary policy.

    I also remember reading some stuff going well back saying that in general, people tend to credit the President pretty directly for whatever the present state of the economy is. If there are issues, they put it at the feet of the President, and if it's going well, they put it at the feet of the President...even if the President didn't have much to do with it (or if it was actually policies from a prior administration that took time to have effect). So to some extent, the politics of being the President always, not just in a situation with a fair bit of inflation as we had stemming from COVID-19, have to do with that voter attribution to the President of the short-term state of the economy.

    I'd also add that political organizations know this and will -- not always honestly -- aim to exacerbate that take.

    https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/sep/08/donald-trump/fact-checking-donald-trump-on-the-scale-and-causes/

    Donald Trump

    stated on September 7, 2024 in a rally in Mosinee, Wis.:

    Vice President Kamala Harris “cast the tiebreaking votes that caused the worst inflation in American history, costing a typical American family $28,000.”

    So if one wants to avoid the executive being unreasonably penalized for -- or taking credit for -- the economic state of affairs, then there's probably a hard communication problem that hasn't been solved for decades and decades that needs to happen.

  • Boy, are they going to be surprised when the minimum wage goes down and what little worker protections US workers have are gone and the economy tanks because of Trump tarrifs and the retaliatory tarrifs from the rest of the world

  • God, this article is awful.

    There's stuff like this:

    A majority of voters nationally said Trump was a strong leader; slightly fewer than half said the same about Harris.

    ...which implies there's some significant difference here without giving you the specific numbers. Is this 51% to 49%? They go into the Latino specifics, but only for Trump, but even break it down further to say what percent of Latinos think Trump is strong versus the percentage of Latinas that think Trump is strong.

    The AP is always held up as this infallibly unbiased source, but even if we agree that being unabashedly both-sides centrist is unbiased, that's not even close to what's happening here. To even remotely both-sides this you'd have to show all the people that think asking the question of Trump's strength is an absolute joke and it's bizarre we're even discussing it because the only people that believe in strongman leadership are literal fascists.

    With respect to the actual headline and meat of the article, it also doesn't challenge the assumption that Trump would be better for the economy. If you're going to include people who were brainwashed into believing that, you have to juxtapose them with the endless historical precedents and current studies that show his policies will absolutely be detrimental to the economy. Even corporations are going to tank in the long term, because you can't steal from the working class forever.

    By continuing Trump's campaign propaganda without serious challenge, this is a right-wing article in support of his administration. A more centrist article would say something closer to "Trump tricks public into believing he'll be better for the economy" because that's the reality of what happened.

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