Election Year 2012: Two Landslides in the Making?
If the economy continues declining into late October, there may be two landslides in the making: the stock market and the presidential election.
The stock market is precariously close to slipping into a landslide. If the economy and stock market both continue declining into late October, the presidential election could also turn into a landslide—against the incumbent.
There is nothing particularly partisan about this possibility; people who vote tend to vote their pocketbooks, and a re-election campaign that boils down to “hey, it’s not as bad as The Great Depression” is unlikely to inspire great loyalty in voters who are already culturally predisposed to tire quickly of presidents, wars and a tanking economy.
If the economy and stock markets are both slip-sliding away, the opponent need only be “not the incumbent” to win.
Presidents facing re-election in deteriorating economic conditions find their support in the critical non-partisan middle is a mile wide and an inch deep. A recessionary economy acts like a drought on that shallow lake of support, and when it dries up then the incumbent loses, and often loses big.