Why Do Republicans Say They’re Struggling?

To judge by the polls, Republicans in Wisconsin and nationally have been doing terrible in recent years.

The Marquette Law School Poll recently released the results of two polls that both covered the same period. The first polled a sample of Wisconsin voters, the first time that Marquette surveyed voters since Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate for US president. The other polled a national sample of voters.

Since 2016, many of the Marquette polls have asked voters to assess their financial situation: “Thinking about your family’s financial situation, would you say you are living comfortably, just getting by, or struggling to make ends meet?”

When it comes to partisan preferences, the poll divides the respondents into five categories: Republicans and Democrats, Independents who lean toward one or the other of the two major parties, and Independents who favor neither party.

The next graph shows result for the poll of Wisconsin voters. The percentage who say they are living comfortably is shown in yellow, those just getting by is shown in magenta, and those struggling to get by is shown in green.

There is a striking difference between Republican and Democratic self-reports. Two thirds of Democrats report that they are living comfortably, compared to one third of Republicans. Also, twice as many Republicans as Democrats report that they are struggling. Also, a much smaller fraction of Democrats report they are struggling than do Republicans or Independents.

If correlation proves causality, why would anyone want to be a Republican if doing so would cut in half the chance of living comfortably and more than doubling the likelihood of struggling to get by? It seems unlikely that this interpretation of the results–that becoming a Democrat is a key to prosperity—is accurate.

As mentioned earlier, this question has been asked numerous times since it was first included in the Marquette Law poll in March of 2016. As the next graph shows, when it first appeared, Republicans reported doing substantially better than Democrats—a greater likelihood of living comfortably and a lesser chance of struggling to get back.

The result shown above for March of 2016 and August 2024 cannot be dismissed as the result of random variation. The next shows the percentages of Republicans (in red) and Democrats (in blue) who reported living comfortably in several of the polls between 2016 and today. Democratic percentages are mostly between 50% and 60% during this period.

By contrast, Republic assessments of their financial situation are substantially more positive than Democratic ones during the earliest part of this period. Then, sometime between August of 2021 and August of 2022, they plunge below Democratic assessments and continue to go down in the following years.

What explains this behavior? The next table compares several measures of economic strength in March 2016 to the most recent values of the same measures of economic strength. Except for inflation, all these measures are for Wisconsin.

Together, these show a state economy that has become stronger during this period. There is no apparent reason to suspect that the economic growth skipped Republicans.

Measure	Mar-16	Most recent
Unemployment	4.0%	2.9%
Jobs (thousands)	2,921	3,048
Manufacturing jobs (thousands)	468.0	481.4
GDP (millions of dollars	291,545	341,585
Labor force	3,110,352	3,140,368
Average real wage	$29.70	$31.69
Inflation	0.9%	3.0%

What accounts for the polling numbers that show the number of Democrats living comfortably to be double the rate of Republicans? First, it is worth noting that there is no evidence that the Biden economy treated Republicans worse than Democrats.

During his campaign Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to use the government to punish his enemies if he is elected to another term. However, there is no evidence that the Biden administration is pursuing a similar strategy. In fact, there a number of examples of Republican members of Congress who voted against President Biden’s infrastructure legislation who now take credit for the projects made possible by that bill.

So, what accounts for the fact that the number of Democrats who report that they live comfortably is twice the number of Republicans? In the absence of evidence that Democrats actually do lead more prosperous lives or that the Biden administration keeps an enemies list that targets Republicans, something else must be operating,

The switch in which more Democrats than Republicans started reporting that they lived comfortably came shortly after Biden’s election as president. Combine this with the extraordinary hold Trump has over MAGA Republicans and his insistence that Biden is the worst president ever, overseeing the worst economy ever.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out and prefer information that supports our preexisting beliefs. As a result, we tend to ignore any information that contradicts those beliefs. Living comfortably under a Democratic president would be inconsistent with MAGA doctrine.