and the answer here is that all the indicators you've been using to tell you that the economy is great haven't been telling you what you think they have. unemployment is intended for use by employers, not politicians, to forecast labor cost increases
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If this is a rational decision by voters, why vote for the guy under whom these very indicators were worse?
The article is about the electorate, and why the electorate made the decision it did.
the article says in pretty plain text that they don't read charts to tell them how the economy is doing, they look at how they're doing. you can get mad at this all you want, it will remain true.