Democratic vs. Republican Presidents: Economic Prosperity

Republicans are supposed to be the party of economic progress.  The Republicans may talk a good game, but when it comes down to measuring actual performance - surprise! - the US economy has done substantially better under Democratic presidents than under Republican presidents.

Let's take a look at how GDP has changed under various presidents.  We'll start from Eisenhower, since WWII and its immediate aftermath (under Truman) is likely to wreck some havoc in the data. 

The "common wisdom" is that:

• the Democrats are the good-hearted party (some would say the bleeding-heart sentimentalist party), willing to sacrifice a little national prosperity in exchange for helping the needy
• the Republicans are the prosperity party, slashing spending and keeping government out of the way of the economic engine of business - the rising tide will lift all boats

Let's put the claim that Republicans are better for the economy to the test.

Most economists believe that the best overall indicator of the economy is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  GDP is a measure of all of the goods and services produced by a nation.  GDP is so important that, when we say that our economy is "in a recession", it simply means that GDP is declining.  When GDP is increasing, as it normally does, the higher the rate of increase in GDP, the better the economy is said to be.

Judging from the table in the Data section, it's not at all obvious that Republican presidents actually do a better job of growing the economy.  In fact, if we rank from best to worst...

we see that GDP growth has been much better under Democratic presidents!  In fact, if GDP under Carter had grown just a touch more, it would be a perfect sweep - all of the Democrats would have fared better than any of the Republicans.

A few caveats here.  First off, this type of measurement is quite imperfect - there are underlying factors, such as the well-known "business cycle" that affect GDP independent of who's running the country.  However, given that the Democrats have such a decisive edge here, it's unlikely that any underlying factors can be found that would turn things around and show that Republican presidents are better for GDP growth.

So the Democrats are the good-hearted party and the party of economic growth!  At least the Republicans are more careful with public money than are the "free-spending" Democrats... or are they?  Stay tuned!

Yearly actual real historical GDP numbers from http://www.eh.net/hmit/gdp/gdp_answer.php?CHKrealGDP=on&year1=1950&year2=2004.  Average for each president was derived by assigning each year to whoever was President for most of that year, and then averaging over all of each President's years.