Economic interests and US elections

John Stoehr raised a question on Twitter:

If economic self-interest did not affect voting in 2016 (it was the racism, stupid), why are we looking to economic self-interest as a *cause* of Trump's declining polling numbers?

I'm skeptical.

A more likely cause is most ppl like him less and less.

Thoughts?

— John Stoehr's Editorial Board (@johnastoehr) September 12, 2019

It‘s certainly not the case that the outcome even of Presidential elections can be reliably projected from econometric data. But there is an enormous amount of public polling data on the concerns most important for voters.

Those show that economic concerns are important. But the current Democratic discussion about whether ”it‘s all about economics“ vs. ”it‘s all about race and gender“ sometimes sounds like a theological argument that ultimately doesn‘t depend on empirical facts.

In reality, issues about jobs or prosperity or social class are intertwined with race, gender, religion and other ”tribal“ factors in voting behavior.

But when it comes to major political donors and billionaire political operators like the Koch brothers, it‘s painfully clear that business and economic considerations loom large for them.

Of course, billionaire donors are channeling their political money based on macroeconomic trends but on policies and regulatory issues that affect their profits.

And particular individual factors like a foreign policy crisis (Iranian hostages 1980) and structural concerns can also be decisive (the Electoral College structure, gerrymandering) can be decisive in outcomes.

And so do very specific organizational concerns, like how active local or state party organizations are, and how thorough and effective the get-out-the-vote operations are.