The Fundamentals and the Vote, 1952–2020

Abstract

Abstract The central focus in this chapter is to show that each of the fundamentals is regularly related to the vote in the post-1984 era. It then shows that this relationship has been growing over the post-1984 period. Indeed, the role of the fundamentals has increased more or less continually in both congressional and presidential elections. Overall, by 2020 nearly seventeen in twenty votes for Congress and nineteen in twenty votes for president are correctly forecast by knowledge of where the voter stands on these fundamentals. This increasing role for fundamentals explains especially the post-1984 changes in national elections. But simply noting the increase begs the question of just what explains this expanding role.