President Ronald Reagan rode a “Morning in America” message to a blowout reelection victory in 1984, based partly on warm feelings about his economic performance. Today’s economy is similar in many ways to Reagan’s as he entered that campaign, with one big difference: There is widespread voter angst over the incumbent’s economic stewardship.

A New York Times/Siena College poll shows President Joe Biden trailing his likely Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, in key battleground states. Poll respondents rate the economy poorly and say they trust Trump more to fix it. That’s true even though the economy grew faster and added more jobs over the past year than forecasters expected, while inflation fell sharply from what had been a four-decade high.

In public and private conversations, and in consultation with outside economists and other experts, Biden’s economic team has been consumed with that disconnect: Why do Americans remain so down on the economy when economic data are trending up?

The answer is almost certainly some combination of how Americans process the economic moment and how Biden communicates about it.

But the contrast with Reagan, and with the economic environment of the early 1980s, also in instructive — years of stagnation and inflation in the 1970s and ’80s, versus the exogenous shock of COVID and its equally economically problematic recovery under Trump and Biden.

Similar circumstances

In fall 1983, Reagan’s reelection was not assured. The nation was still emerging from a recession that had marred his first two years in office. Consumer prices had risen more than 15% since he took office — nearly as much as they have risen on Biden’s watch. Translated into today’s dollars, the price of a gallon of gasoline was about $3.80, about 40 cents higher than it is now. The typical American’s wages had not increased at all during Reagan’s tenure, after adjustment for higher prices, similar to Biden’s experience.

But public faith in the economy, and in Reagan’s handling of it, was significantly stronger than it is for Biden.

The University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment was roughly 50% higher under Reagan in fall 1983 than it is now. Polls then showed his approval rating climbing, including sentiment on the economy.

A year later, Reagan would air “Prouder, Stronger, Better,” a television ad that began with the words “It’s morning again in America.” It highlighted falling inflation and lower interest rates allowing more Americans to buy homes.

Slow roll versus shock

Reagan’s appeals worked in part because Americans had just endured more than a decade of persistently high prices and high interest rates. Economists and historians generally agree that voters came to see the progress under Reagan as relief from a long, difficult period.

Voter psychology is different under Biden. The 9% annual inflation rate that the country experienced last year was more than triple the average rate from the end of Reagan’s time in the White House to the start of Biden’s. Those mortgage rates Reagan trumpeted? They were around 14% in 1984. Right now, rates are just below 8%. The difference is that under Reagan, rates fell, and under Biden, they’ve gone up.

For Biden and his economic team, “the problem is really in the way people think about and process economic information, rather than the economic fundamentals,” said Francesco D’Acunto, an economist at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business who recently briefed the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

D’Acunto presented slides at the White House highlighting work he and colleagues have done, drilling down into how consumers process price increases. They find that consumers’ attitudes are shaped most by the products they buy most often — like milk, gasoline, bread and beer — and not by the things they spend the most money on.

They also find that unexpected price surges stick in shoppers’ minds, negatively. They linger in a way that slower-building price increases, or even prolonged periods of high prices, do not.

That research helps explain why voters did not punish Reagan for inflation even though the price growth he oversaw never reversed itself: They were accustomed to rapid price growth and grateful for improvement.

Blue-collar appeal

But D’Acunto says his research suggests that Biden might be able to brighten voters’ moods by mounting a public persuasion campaign, focusing on prices that have begun to come down from recent highs.

Biden’s campaign recently spent $25 million on television ads to promote “Bidenomics” — a mix of the president’s blue-collar background and policy blueprint that is meant to resonate with the working class

There is little evidence in polls that those efforts have broken through. Biden aides say they did not expect immediate results. They are testing messages, they say, including how best to talk about Biden’s economic record, as the president prepares to spend $1 billion or more in advertising before the election.

Reagan also made a habit of both championing the economy’s performance and critiquing press coverage of its flaws. At this point in his presidency, Americans were far more likely to report hearing positive news about the economy and prices than they do under Biden.

Biden has often tried to strike more of a balance between celebrating strong job growth and acknowledging the pain of high prices. He has leaned more into boosterism in recent months — as the share of Americans reporting in the Michigan index that they hear good economic news has grown.