"THE economy, stupid," was the slogan of a strategist in Bill Clinton's campaign for the presidency in 1992. It was a pithy encapsulation of time-honoured spin-doctoring wisdom: that a strong economy helps the incumbent and a weak one helps the challenger. When Mr Clinton took on George H.W. Bush in 1992, real wages were stagnant. Unemployment peaked just months before the poll-and, sure enough, Mr Bush failed to win a second term. The 2,000-odd studies on the "economic vote" since then have turned the pollsters' hunch into political gospel. A crosscountry analysis by Larry Bartels of Vanderbilt University, looking at 2007-11, found that each extra percentage point of gdp growth in the four quarters before an election was associated with a rise of 1% in the incumbent party's vote share.
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