How did Trump come so close to winning in 2020 given the macro circumstances?

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

If you look at the circumstances - deadly pandemic + an economy worse than 2008 + riots under his watch, you would've expected Trump to lose by way more. His performance should've been much closer to Bush Sr. or Carter. The 413-125 predictions seemed way more in line with the fundamentals than the actual results.

Was Biden really that weak of a challenger?

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

And indeed, how somebody who allowed a Democratic trifecta is "underrated" electorally.

The opposite is true, most Trumpoids wildly OVERRATE him due to 2016.

An election that HRC lost, rather than he won.

The Democrats got a bare minimum trifecta when economic growth was worse than 2008.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

And indeed, how somebody who allowed a Democratic trifecta is "underrated" electorally.

The opposite is true, most Trumpoids wildly OVERRATE him due to 2016.

An election that HRC lost, rather than he won.

The Democrats got a bare minimum trifecta when economic growth was worse than 2008.

Please provide the numbers you've used to reach this conclusion.

Because it looks to me like the 2020 election took place amidst astounding economic growth -- the Q3 2020 GDP measurement (the last GDP measurement released before the 2020 election) demonstrated growth at a 30+% annualized rate over the Q2 2020 measurement.

GDP growth in 2008 was barely positive, and in 2009 was -2.60%. GDP growth in 2020 was -2.77%.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

And indeed, how somebody who allowed a Democratic trifecta is "underrated" electorally.

The opposite is true, most Trumpoids wildly OVERRATE him due to 2016.

An election that HRC lost, rather than he won.

The Democrats got a bare minimum trifecta when economic growth was worse than 2008.

Please provide the numbers you've used to reach this conclusion.

Because it looks to me like the 2020 election took place amidst astounding economic growth -- the Q3 2020 GDP measurement (the last GDP measurement released before the 2020 election) demonstrated growth at a 30+% annualized rate over the Q2 2020 measurement.

GDP growth in 2008 was barely positive, and in 2009 was -2.60%. GDP growth in 2020 was -2.77%.

There are two reasons why that didn't much matter for the 2020 election:

First, as I said already when I pointed at the Q3 2020 numbers, we were already well and clearly into recovery.

Second, people were confident that economic issues would be transient.  And there's a measurement that supports this.  The stock market measures how much folks want to own company stocks.  And they'll want to own more stocks when the expected future payout (i.e. dividends) is greater.  A rising stock market therefore indicates confidence in future GDP (at least when interest rates are steady).

The 2008 stock market tanked.  The 2020 stock market didn't.  In 2020, people remained quite confident about the future economy.

The stock market rose because the Fed cut interest rates to 0 creating more cheap money for the big financial institutions, not because of Main Street economic fundamentals.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

And indeed, how somebody who allowed a Democratic trifecta is "underrated" electorally.

The opposite is true, most Trumpoids wildly OVERRATE him due to 2016.

An election that HRC lost, rather than he won.

The Democrats got a bare minimum trifecta when economic growth was worse than 2008.

Please provide the numbers you've used to reach this conclusion.

Because it looks to me like the 2020 election took place amidst astounding economic growth -- the Q3 2020 GDP measurement (the last GDP measurement released before the 2020 election) demonstrated growth at a 30+% annualized rate over the Q2 2020 measurement.

GDP growth in 2008 was barely positive, and in 2009 was -2.60%. GDP growth in 2020 was -2.77%.

There are two reasons why that didn't much matter for the 2020 election:

First, as I said already when I pointed at the Q3 2020 numbers, we were already well and clearly into recovery.

Second, people were confident that economic issues would be transient.  And there's a measurement that supports this.  The stock market measures how much folks want to own company stocks.  And they'll want to own more stocks when the expected future payout (i.e. dividends) is greater.  A rising stock market therefore indicates confidence in future GDP (at least when interest rates are steady).

The 2008 stock market tanked.  The 2020 stock market didn't.  In 2020, people remained quite confident about the future economy.

The stock market rose because the Fed cut interest rates to 0 creating more cheap money for the big financial institutions, not because of Main Street economic fundamentals.

If this is right, then I notice I'm confused (and you should be, too).  Because the Fed also cut rates to zero during the 2008 crisis, *and* did QE, and it *still* didn't save the stock market quickly.  Why not?

This observation is easy to explain from my viewpoint: There was considerable confidence in our economic future in 2020 and there wasn't much confidence in 2008.

2008 was the first time quantitative easing was done. People still didn't know how the stock market would react - some people actually feared that all the money printing would cause hyperinflation. There were also 2 additional rounds of quantitative easing after that.

In 2020, there was already previous experience with quantitative easing, so stock market investors immediately priced it in.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

The macro circumstances were favoring Republicans (esp. in the wake of riots and excessive COVID restrictions pushed by Democrats) and any competent R President would have won the election by ~3 points in the PV. Like in 2016 (and in 2024 if it does happen again), the fact that Trump "overperformed" the polls was a sign not of his unique strength as a candidate but of how R-friendly the underlying fundamentals were.

The idea that the riots in particular helped Democrats is laughably absurd. Any Republican with a modicum of campaign skill would have taken a page out of Richard Nixon's playbook on that one.

I'm not sure how a Republican President should expect to win the popular vote by 3 points when the economy is that bad. McCain faced higher economic growth (0.12% in 2008 and -2.60% in 2009 versus -2.77% in 2020) and lost worse.