It feels like it’s impossible to counter this. My wife was talking to a lowish-info coworker about the election the other day and she said “I dunno I guess I’m gonna vote for Trump just because he’s better for the economy”, saying it like it’s just an obvious fact like “the sky is blue”.
There are like a zillion people for which it’s just conventional wisdom that the GOP is better for all this stuff, and they don’t read or pay attention to anything, so it goes unchallenged.
So going down a little rabbit hole. I wondered how well the Cook Political Report projections have fared over the years.
Found this
Focusing on President by state since I think the 80s
You can see from this that there is marginal bias that they overestimate Ds vs Rs, something on the order of 3-4% absolute.
Toss-ups are roughly 56-44 for Rs.
They only have 6 instances of incorrectly called states in the lean R or lead D categories. Painful to see that 2016 PA, MI, and WI are half of those.
Currently they have
D 226 R 219
These are all solid or likely except the 1EV in Nebraska which is lean D
Here are the toss-ups for 93EV
If the good guys are 44-56 dogs for this 93 EVs then we get 41 vs 52 and we lose 267-271, so we still need some polling to shift somebody into lean D. Im counting on my home state of Michigan. (And we can still get screwed)
So knife’s edge.
The article does not note if the tossups tend to go strongly one way or the other in a particular election. So is it bell shaped or do the D vs R frequencies tend to cluster at end of the ranges.
Yeah it’s absurd. You ask them how or why or based on what and they give you a response you’d get from a 5 year old - “Because they are.”
It’s absolutely infuriating.
Weird.
It’s not impossible, but it is work. Rich people have done an incredible job equating what’s good for rich people with what’s good for “the economy.” But Slick Willy’s line about 50 million jobs created to 1 million (actually 2) in favor of Dems is a great stat to have in your pocket to quiz people like this on. HW oversaw a recession, W oversaw 2 recessions, and Trump exacerbated the economic distress of the pandemic. Republicans are terrible for the economy!
And like 40% of the country believes it to their core and thinks it’s indisputable, so it’s often hard to win those arguments with randos. I think when it comes to the immigration and crime stuff the GOP is more “credible,” on it because you can tell they deeply dislike immigrants and criminals, get off on punishing them, and have no sympathy for them. “Oh the kid got arrested for possession of marijuana and the cops broke his neck? Fuck him, he had it coming! This is a nation of laws!” When they think like that, obviously they’re going to crack down as much as they possibly can using their power.
When Dems say they’ll do things in that regard, it’s more likely to be viewed as possible political theatre because they have sympathy and empathy for undocumented immigrants, kids who sell a little weed, etc.
The economy stuff comes down to respect for authority figures. The vast majority of billionaires and multi-millionaires tell everyone the GOP is better for the economy, and those guys must know, right? They’re rich!
It makes one wonder why the fuck Dems aren’t running a 30 second ad that just repeats that stat like three times, with some regular folks in between talking about how their job/business was created under Clinton/Obama/Biden.
They better put that half a billy to good use, cause you know Trump is just going to go apeshit on immigrant crime and inflation down the stretch.
“Republicans are good for the economy and Dems are weak pansies on defense” has been baked into Boomer brains, it’s impossible to dislodge. Never mind that their 401ks took off like a rocket during the Obama era.
The crazy thing is you could fill lots of time with people who will 100% tell you that their businesses were created under Obama or Biden and then proceed to tell you why they’re voting for Trump anyway.
well yeah, what you want when you’re starting a business and what you want when you have an already successful business are way different
And it’s still dumb because as a business owner I can tell you the economic conditions matter a LOT more than taxes. When the trucking market is tight/expensive and trucks are hard to find I make roughly double what I make in years where that isn’t the case. I got to keep an extra 5-10k a year because of the Trump tax cut. You could raise my income tax rate to 50% and it wouldn’t matter as much as doubling my income does that’s just math.
Even among high earners a good economy > a good tax rate AINEC.
yeah but they’re dumb
Good luck explaining that to my mom. She was ranting for 30 minutes about how she disagrees with Trump on almost every social issue, thinks he’s a disaster for the environment, and thinks he took off too many regulations - however, MUH TAXES, ECONOMY AND BUSINESS ACUMEN!
She has to vote for him. Kamala is a Marxist!
My favorite is how Republicans/conservative boomers can’t grasp that inflation has eased to the Fed’s target rate and quicker than anywhere else in the developed world. And, when you point out that wage growth has outpaced inflation since February 2023 they handwave you away like some idiot liberal. The vibes are baked into their core ideology/identity and can’t seem to grasp data or statistics. It’s infuriating. Oh, they can never explain what Biden policies caused inflation but when you point out Trump’s deficit spending as a driver of inflationary conditions it’s always “Oh, all you can do is blame Trump for everything” and the conversation ends.
There I attack the economy and business acumen very hard. I also go after Kamala being a Marxist supposedly and then finish with calling her selfish because she’d be fine seeing the whole country burn to save herself a single digit % of taxes.
Yes this is going to necessitate being really really unpleasant to your mother so don’t bother if she doesn’t live in a swing state.
The main problem, as I see it, is that these people are fucking morons.
Inflation should be a dead issue because of this. Kamalanomics already fixed it! But people see prices are still high so they assume inflation is still high.
Similarly, immigration should be a dead issue since border apprehensions are also way down over recent months. Not to mention Trump’s killing of the bipartisan border bill for political benefit, which should be a much bigger scandal.
Meanwhile I just saw a superpac attack ad with the theme “Kamala lies a lot!” 
If Kamala and Tim show up to a suburban Phoenix pickleball court at dawn and jump into some random doubles games, not only do they carry AZ easily, but it also puts Florida in play. 
Is Harris going to run some attack adds on RFK as if he were Trump running mate? Feel like there so much material there that kinda new to people compared to same old same old with Trump
