Data Watch · Democrats vs. Republicans, Part 3 of 7 · October 9, 2026, 8:00 AM CDT
Key Facts
- Real GDP growth averaged about 3.5% a year under Democratic presidents and 2.7% under Republican ones from 1953 to 2025.[1]
- Of the 11 recessions dated by the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1953, 10 began with a Republican in the White House and 1 with a Democrat.[2]
- The 1980 recession began under Jimmy Carter. The 1981–82 recession came as the Federal Reserve raised rates to break inflation. [2][3]
- Economists Blinder and Watson found a Democratic edge in growth and attributed it to oil shocks, productivity and the world economy, not to different policies. [4]
The economy grows, stalls, then grows again. The question this week is whether it grew faster on one party’s watch, and whether recessions favor one side of the aisle.
This is Part 3 of 7. Parts 1 and 2 covered jobs and prices. Today we step back to the whole economy.
- Part 1: Jobs · Oct 7
- Part 2: Prices and paychecks · Oct 8
- Part 3: Growth and recessions (this post)
- Part 4: Debt and deficits · Oct 10
- Part 5: Congress · Oct 11
- Part 6: Voters · Oct 12
- Part 7: Red and blue states · Oct 13
The question
Did the economy grow faster under Democratic or Republican presidents, and who was in office when recessions hit?
Gross domestic product, or GDP, is the total market value of the goods and services a country produces in a year.[5] We use the version adjusted for inflation, which economists call real GDP.[1]
The best stretches were Johnson (5.3%) and Kennedy (4.4%). The slowest were Trump’s first term (1.5%) and Obama (1.7%).
The recession record
The National Bureau of Economic Research, a private research group whose Business Cycle Dating Committee decides when recessions begin and end, lists 11 recessions from 1953 on.[2]
In 10 of them a Republican was president when the economy peaked and in 1 a Democrat was. The one under a Democrat began in January 1980, under Jimmy Carter.[2]
Be careful with that count. A recession starts when the economy turns, which can follow years of earlier decisions, a war, an oil spike or a financial bubble. The 1981–82 recession, for example, followed the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates sharply to break inflation, which a Federal Reserve history says it did to end the Great Inflation. [3]
What the data says, and what it does not
It says growth was higher on average under Democratic presidents, and that most recessions since 1953 began with a Republican in office. Both facts are real. Neither shows that the president caused them.
Blinder and Watson tested exactly that. Their paper found a Democratic advantage and traced it to “more benign oil shocks,” better productivity and a friendlier world economy rather than to monetary or fiscal policy. [4] In plain terms, the study points to conditions the president did not control, not to a different set of policies.
- Democratic presidents averaged 1.2 points of yearly growth more than Republican presidents on this measure. The 95% range around that gap runs from +0.2 to +2.1 points of yearly growth; if the party label meant nothing, a gap this large would show up in about 3.9% of random shuffles of the 6 Democratic and 8 Republican presidencies.[1]
- The growth numbers use calendar years, so a president who took office in January gets the full first year, including the effects of earlier decisions.
- Only 11 recessions exist in this period, which is a small count. A 10-to-1 split looks dramatic, but a few linked events (the 1950s recessions, the 1970s oil shocks) are not independent.
- We did not adjust for oil prices, wars or world growth. Blinder and Watson did, and that is why their result is more careful than ours.
- GDP: the total value of goods and services produced in a year
- Real GDP: GDP adjusted for inflation
- Recession: a period of falling economic activity; the NBER dates them
- Peak and trough: the high point before a recession and the low point at its end
Check it yourself: the sources, by tier
Primary sources are the agencies and datasets themselves. Secondary sources are research and analysis built on them. Tertiary sources are reference works. Each was read before it was cited.
- Primary U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Income and Product Accounts, annual data (real GDP percent change, series A191RL), 1930 to 2025, retrieved Oct 6, 2026. apps.bea.gov
- Primary National Bureau of Economic Research, “US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions” (peak and trough dates and how the Business Cycle Dating Committee dates recessions). nber.org
- Secondary Bryan, M., “The Great Inflation (1965–1982),” Federal Reserve History, Nov 22, 2013 (the 1980 and 1981–82 recessions followed tight monetary policy that broke inflation). federalreservehistory.org
- Secondary Blinder, A. S., and Watson, M. W., “Presidents and the US Economy: An Econometric Exploration,” American Economic Review 106(4), 2016, pp. 1015–1045. doi.org
- Tertiary “Gross domestic product,” Wikipedia (definition of GDP, real versus nominal GDP, and what GDP does not measure). wikipedia.org
Investigative methodology: this series was written by a person from the sources cited, with every figure computed by a script from the primary data linked in each part; no language model chose or wrote a number. “Democratic” and “Republican” mean the party of the president in office. The comparison describes what happened under each party’s presidents. It does not show that a president or a party caused it.
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