When Americans are confident about their economy, they tend to support the incumbent president. When they are not confident, they tend to withdraw that support. The chart below shows that relationship between consumer confidence and public approval of incumbent US presidents’ performances over the last 45 years from January 1978 to December 2023, using monthly data. The relationship between the two measures is not perfect, but when consumer confidence increased rapidly as it did under Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and again under Democrat Bill Clinton in the 1990s, presidential approval ratings also increased rapidly at the…
