The 2020 election will be about the recession and immigration

In next year’s presidential election, voters will be concerned primarily with the economy (which will be in a recession) and immigration.

That’s a lofty assertion to make sixteen months before the fact. As one example of how silly what I’m doing is generally considered, anyone writing about politics in July 1991 would have had to contend with President George H.W. Bush’s 74 percent approval rating in arguing that Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton — who was polling at roughly 1.7 percent—would help keep the incumbent to under 40 percent … a figure not seen since 1932.

But what I’m arguing is actually pretty easy:

1. A never-wrong economic indicator says we’re headed for a recession. Recessions that occur in the year of or the year before a presidential election result in the White House changing parties.
2. The Democratic Party gets better at winning elections (or at least the popular vote) as more voters care chiefly about the economy.
3. The Republican Party will stoke anti-immigration fears, which were particularly sharp in the seven swing states Trump won, in an effort to win where it must.

First, the never-wrong economic indicator: the yield curve.

Thanks to Campbell Harvey, we know that when the yield curve inverts — another way of saying that “short-term interest rates exceed long-term rates” — a recession is coming. And the past four times a recession occurred in the year before an election, the White House changed parties:

1. The recession in 2007–09, otherwise known as the Great Recession, gave us a horrible economy and the highest level of voter economic concerns in a presidential election year dating back 32 years.
2. The recession in 2002 came far too late to help either presidential nominee, but if it had started earlier, George W. Bush might have won by a good bit more.
3. The recession in 1990–91 came a good bit before the 1992 election, but not enough to help George H.W. Bush stay in office.
4. The recession in 1980 helped Reagan beat Carter (and it also did a number on income inequality).
5. The recession in 1973–75 helped Carter beat Ford.

All of this would be mere intrigue into how economics informs politics except for this fact, reported by Duke Today:

“June 30 marked the day where the yield curve was inverted for a full quarter — triggering a recession forecast.”

Cue the changing of the White House. And that recession trend is compounded by my second point:

Twenty-eight years ago, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was running for president with James Carville by his side. And his message was simple:

“Mr. Clinton and his aides have said from the very beginning that those interests can be summed up in three phrases, which are on a sign in the campaign’s headquarters: “Change vs. more of the same. The economy, stupid. Don’t forget health care.””

On that middle point, Carville was smarter than many people are now. Economics is on most voters’ minds, and the more of them that are thinking about economics, the better the outcome generally is for Democrats. Here’s a chart showing Democratic presidential nominee popular vote margin versus voter economic concerns:

In five of the six presidential elections in which voters cared most about the economy, the Democratic nominee won the popular vote. And in the four elections in which they cared least about the economy, the Democratic nominee either won a narrow majority or got destroyed.

So the Republican Party is on notice that if it allows the election to be framed as being about the economy — and if we’re in a recession, the economy will dominate unless we have another Watergate-level story on our hands — it will lose. Surely the party has a solution to this problem, yes?

As one party standard-bearer once didn’t say, you bet your bippy (he didn’t know what a bippy was, and he didn’t want to know). The party has won by using international affairs concerns, which have been voiced as concerns with foreign policy, individual countries and terrorism. Here’s a chart showing international affairs versus economics as a voter concern since 1980:

The only years in which international concerns beat domestic ones are years in which the Republican won both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

But this article is about immigration, and there’s a reason for that: When the economy is bad, xenophobia kicks up.

That was true in the 1930s, when most Americans opposed allowing increased Jewish immigration to America (during the Holocaust). Our economy was still not doing great, and many people were worried about how the addition of however many people would strain things financially. But also, a whole lot of Americans just despised Jews.

American xenophobia hasn’t gone away, and exit polls in the seven swing states that Trump won make clear just how much of a winning issue immigration is for Republicans. Here’s a chart:

So Trump beat Hillary 3:1 among immigration-focused voters in those states. By contrast, more people care about terrorism, but they’re not nearly as reliably in Trump’s corner:

On terrorism, he was at 5:3, which is still dominant, but not as overpowering as immigration’s 3:1 ratio.

Another reason Republicans might stoke immigration fears is that terrorism doesn’t drive people to Republicans as much as you might think. And while we’re on the subject of conventional wisdom myths, foreign policy — a double-digit concern in four of the past six elections the Republicans have won — was a loser for Republicans in 2016. Hillary beat Trump on the issue decisively in six of those seven states (Indiana is the exception, but Hillary got smoked in Indiana otherwise):

Hillary won foreign policy by 21 points in those states.

A final point in immigration’s column is that people care about it a lot right now: 23 percent of respondents to Gallup’s tracking poll cited immigration as their top concern in June, and that’s the highest that figure has been since before December. A fair number of those concerned people are probably expressing outrage at the Trump administration’s use of concentration camps to hold undocumented immigrants who are fleeing cartel violence and other awful situations, but lots of voters believe sincerely that America would be safer/better/richer/whatever if it had fewer immigrants. But however they feel about immigration, Americans are clearly more concerned about it than we were in November 2016, when 13 percent of voters said it was their top concern.

So there you have it:

1. The yield curve predicts recession, and it says one is coming.
2. Democrats win when voters are concerned about the economy, and if a recession hits, voters will be worried about the economy.
3. Republicans will counter economic fears by stoking immigration fears.

Now we wait for life in this country to get even worse. … yay?