Why the economy drove voters toward Donald Trump

You probably heard this line before: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Well, in the case of this week’s presidential election, that very well might be the case.

Poll after poll after poll after poll has shown that dissatisfaction with the state of the economy under President Joe Biden was a major factor in pushing Americans to the voting booth — and filling in the little bubble near Donald Trump’s name.

To discuss the role of the economy in the election, “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio spoke with Karen Petrou, founder of Federal Financial Analytics. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: You have long studied how the economy serves people, how it can contribute to their livelihoods or not. Now that we’ve been looking through what voters told exit poll surveys, what do you make of this strong view that the economy stinks, even when the indicators say it’s relatively awesome?

Karen Petrou: In a nation as acutely unequal as the United States, with such disproportionate income and wealth held in the top 1%, aggregate data do not represent the way 90% of Americans live if the top 1% of Americans have more wealth than the bottom 90%. So who gets the results of that GDP and who is being paid what for that job? And Americans said, “Not me. I worry, I struggle, I’m afraid.”

Brancaccio: Now that’s a central topic for us on this program over the months and the years, which is inequality. But we also have data from the job market, and it looks like the economy keeps adding more people on the payrolls and that the unemployment rate looks low. Is the fact that people are still feeling precarious in their lives. Is it something to do with, well, they have to work two or three of those jobs to make ends meet?

Petrou: Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the difference between what $100 of groceries cost in 2019 to what they cost today, and what wages look like in 2019 and what they look like today — in other words, the gap is really gigantic.

Brancaccio: Now, from all of our conversations over the years, Karen, I wouldn’t expect you to be fully aligned with Senator Bernie Sanders’ view, but he said something yesterday that you have highlighted on this program: the number of people, the percentage of people here in America living paycheck to paycheck.

Petrou: Yeah, the last data I saw was that it’s close to 70%. One out of five households making over $150,000 is living paycheck to paycheck. That’s frightening.

Brancaccio: So therefore you are not surprised that so many people voted for change and told pollsters it had to do with their dim view of the economy?

Petrou: I hate to put it this bluntly, but I think when Harris said she wasn’t changing anything from Biden and Trump’s message — for all, what I consider to be lies, fantasies and distortions sometimes very disturbing thought — he said, “You are hurting. That’s unfair, and I can fix it.”