Unfortunately, social media and the rise of the right wing MAGA media sphere wasn’t taken into account. America has become a country of low information voters. The MAGA media sphere news did not track the objective economy and was incredibly inaccurate.
What is interesting here is how little influence media coverage of the econ has when it does deviate from actual econ. This is likely a floor rather than a ceiling but nevertheless likely smaller than most would have expected. Unemployment effects, for example, are not mediated by news tone at all.
There's a ton of data from the recent election that calls that into question. E. g. the disconnect between people's personal finances and their assessment of the national economy.
I guess that's good news about unemployment, but it does suggest that an election that focuses on e.g. inflation would be more likely to be driven by news coverage.
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