Democratic Presidents Create Stronger Economies
History Shows Democratic Presidents Create Stronger Economies
Who manages the economy the best? Democrats or Republicans? History shows us Democrats do the best, by far!
Our Congress has studied this issue and in 2016 announced that ever since World War II, Democratic presidents have had better economies than Republican ones. The report came from the Joint Economic Committee, the advisory panel in Congress for economic policy. You can see the report here:
A 2013 study by 2 Princeton professors found “The U.S. economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance. For many measures, including real GDP growth (on which we concentrate), the performance gap is both large and statistically significant.”
Business Insider magazine updated the 2016 finding by Congress in an article on 8-24-2020 called Democratic presidents are better for the stock market and economy than Republicans, one study shows. This short article just had 4 bullet points, quoted here:
- “Contrary to popular belief, the stock market and economy have performed better under Democratic presidents than it has under Republican presidents, according to data going back to 1946.”
- “Liberum, a UK-based investment bank, pointed to historical stock market returns and annual GDP growth to make the case that a Republican president’s drive to cut taxes and reduce government spending often leads to lower economic expansion and stock market returns than when a Democratic president is in office.”
- “Since 1947, the S&P 500 has posted a total annual return of 10.8% under Democratic presidents, versus 5.6% under Republican presidents.”
- “And if you exclude the Great Recession and COVID-19 pandemic, both of which happened under a Republican president, the data still points to stronger returns for Democratic presidents versus Republican presidents.”
Forbes published an article on 11-7-16 called Trump Is Right About One Thing: ‘The Economy Does Better Under The Democrats’ and updated it on 4/14/22. These 5 points are all quotes from this article:
- “By crucial metrics like GDP, job creation, business investment and avoiding recessions, the economy does a lot better with Democrats in the White House than with Republicans. Just one eye-opening example: Nine of the last 10 recessions have been under Republicans.”
- “It is simply a fact that since World War II, Democratic presidents have seen 24.4 million more jobs created on their watch—an average of 78.6% more jobs created per year of Democratic administrations—than have Republican presidents.”
- “Ditto real GDP growth, 44% higher under Democratic presidents.”
- “On the flip side, unemployment has been 18% higher under GOP presidents.”
- “Real business investment has been 193% higher under Democratic presidents.”
The Economic Policy Institute published a report on 4-2-24 Economic performance is stronger when Democrats hold the White House. The following 3 paragraphs are quotes that summarize their key findings:
“Since 1949, there has been a Democratic advantage in the average performance of key macroeconomic indicators measuring economic health, including:
- Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth
- Job growth
- Unemployment rate
- Growth in inflation-adjusted wages
- Growth of market-based incomes per capita
- Inflation
- Interest rates”
“This Democratic advantage is across the board in all variables we measure but strongest in private-sector outcomes—notably, business investment, job growth, and the growth of market-based incomes.”
“Household income growth (adjusted for inflation) was faster on average and far more equal during Democratic administrations, and the Democratic advantage shows up for every group.”
On 3-28-2024, the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs The published a blog Historical Puzzle of US Economic Performance under Democrats vs. Republicans. It reported all the following:
- “The US economy has since World War II consistently done better under Democratic presidents than under Republican presidents.”
- “Since World War II, Democrats have seen job creation average 1.7 % per year when in office, versus 1.0 % under the GOP. US GDP has averaged a rate of growth of 4.23 percent per annum during Democratic administrations, versus 2.36 per cent under Republicans, a remarkable difference of 1.87 percentage points. This is postwar data, covering 19 presidential terms—from Truman through Biden. If one goes back further, to the Great Depression, to include Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, the difference in growth rates is even larger.”
- “The average Democratic presidential term has been in recession for 1 of its 16 quarters, whereas the average for the Republican terms has been 5 quarters, a startlingly big difference.”
- “The last five recessions all started while a Republican was in the White House (Reagan. G.H.W. Bush, G.W. Bush twice, and Trump).” (They gave the odds of this happening by chance 1 out of 32, like getting 5 heads out of 5 consecutive coin flips.)
- “A remarkable 9 of the last 10 recessions have started when a Republican was president.” (They gave the odds of this happening by chance even worse, just 1 out of 100.
- “Ever since World War II, every time a Democratic president replaced a Republican one, the US growth rate went up. Every time a Republican president replaced a Democratic one, the growth rate went down.” (They gave the odds of this happening 1 out of 1,024, like getting 10 heads out of 10 consecutive coin flips.)
All the following statistics come from two New Republic magazine articles, dated 5-3-22 and 10-31-22:
Recessions:
We’ve had 17 recessions over the last 100 years, with 13 happening under Republican presidents and only 4 under Democratic presidents.
The 4 very worst recessions occurred under Republican presidents, including the Great Depression and Trump’s covid recession in 2020.
Economic Growth:
No president has ever had larger growth in gross domestic product (GDP) since the Democratic president Franklin Roosevelt.
The next 3 best presidents for GDP growth were the Democratic presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton, in descending order.
Donald Trump had the very worst growth in GDP of all the presidents since Roosevelt.
Job Creation:
The 6 presidents with the fastest rate of job growth since Roosevelt were all Democrats: Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton.
The 4 worst in job growth since Roosevelt were all Republican: Eisenhower, both Bush presidents (father and son), and Trump.
Trump had the very worst job growth. In the last 90 years, he was the only president to lose more jobs than he created!
Trump did create 7 million jobs before covid. But Obama created 1.3 million more during the equivalent period of Obama’s last term.
Deficits:
In general, Democrats have done far better with our deficit than Republicans.
Clinton cleaned up the deficit exploded by Republican George H. W. Bush to $255 billion. Clinton took that huge deficit and turned it into a surplus of $236 billion.
Republican George W. Bush exploded the deficit again up to $1.4 trillion with his tax cuts and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Democrat Obama brought that down by half to $584.6 billion.
Republican Trump exploded it back up to $3.1 trillion.
Biden has it down to $1.7 trillion now.
Stock Markets:
Princeton economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson found that, since Truman, stock markets rose more than twice as high under Democratic presidents than under Republican ones.
Comparing Recent Democratic & Republican Presidents
In the 32 years between 1988 and 2020, we had 16 years with Democratic presidents and 16 years with Republican presidents.
During this time:
Democrats created 33.8 million jobs, Republicans only 1.9 million.
- Democrats grew the gross domestic product (GDP) 3.1%, Republicans only 1.62%.
- Democrats increased median household income 9.5%, Republicans only 0.6%.
- Democrats increased the Dow Jones an average of 185.5%, Republicans only 26%.
- Democrats reduced our deficit by $400 billion, Republicans increased it by $3.5 trillion!