Dem
47
GOP
53
It's getting a little broken-recordish, but the markets had another bad day yesterday. The Dow Jones was down 971.82 points (-2.48%), the S&P 500 was down 124.50 points (-2.36%) and the Nasdaq was down 415.55 points (-2.55%). The primary reason, according to market analysts, is Donald Trump's ongoing (and entirely one-sided) war against Fed Chair Jerome Powell. It would seem that when a president openly attacks the chair of the Fed Reserve, this creates "instability" in the markets.
We take it as a given that this kind of squabbling will have deleterious effects on the economy and on the markets. After all, investors want to feel there's a steady hand steering the ship of state, and another one steering the ship of the central bank, and that neither is under the control of a petulant man-child. We also take it as a given that Powell means it when he says he's not resigning, no matter what Trump says.
If you accept both of these precepts, we are left with only four possibilities, as far as we can see: (1) Trump is so poor at macroeconomics he does not grasp the first precept; (2) Trump is so poor at interpersonal relations that he does not grasp the second precept; (3) Trump cares more about venting his anger and settling his scores (as he sees them) than he cares about the health of the U.S. economy; (4) some combination of the above. As always, we freely admit we are not economists, so if any readers think we've misstepped in any of these three paragraphs, please do let us know at comments@electoral-vote.com.
On this general point, we've had several readers write in to note that Trump has now overseen nine of the ten largest one-day point drops in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Now, that is not an entirely fair framing, of course, because a 750-point, or 1,000-point, or 1,500-point drop was not mathematically possible when the DJIA was only 500 or 680 or 990 50 years ago. On the other hand, it's not entirely unfair, either, since Joe Biden squeezed 4 years in during the same era, and he has only one of the ten biggest drops (#9, which was on September 13, 2022, and saw the Dow drop by 1,276 points).
A fairer comparison is to look at drops by percentage. Here are the 20 biggest of those:
| Date | Close | Pts. Lost | Pct. Lost | President |
| October 19, 1987 | 1,738.74 | -508.00 | -22.61 | Ronald Reagan |
| March 16, 2020 | 20,188.52 | -2,997.10 | -12.93 | Donald Trump |
| October 28, 1929 | 260.64 | -38.33 | -12.82 | Herbert Hoover |
| October 29, 1929 | 230.07 | -30.57 | -11.73 | Herbert Hoover |
| March 12, 2020 | 21,200.62 | -2,352.60 | -9.99 | Donald Trump |
| November 6, 1929 | 232.13 | -25.55 | -9.92 | Herbert Hoover |
| December 18, 1899 | 58.27 | -5.57 | -8.72 | William McKinley |
| August 12, 1932 | 63.11 | -5.79 | -8.40 | Herbert Hoover |
| March 14, 1907 | 76.23 | -6.89 | -8.29 | Theodore Roosevelt |
| October 26, 1987 | 1,793.93 | -156.83 | -8.04 | Ronald Reagan |
| October 15, 2008 | 8,577.91 | -733.08 | -7.87 | George W. Bush |
| July 21, 1933 | 88.71 | -7.55 | -7.84 | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| March 9, 2020 | 23,851.02 | -2,013.76 | -7.79 | Donald Trump |
| October 18, 1937 | 125.73 | -10.57 | -7.75 | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| December 1, 2008 | 8,149.09 | -679.95 | -7.70 | George W. Bush |
| October 9, 2008 | 8,579.19 | -678.91 | -7.33 | George W. Bush |
| February 1, 1917 | 88.52 | -6.91 | -7.24 | Woodrow Wilson |
| October 27, 1997 | 7,161.14 | -554.26 | -7.18 | Bill Clinton |
| October 5, 1932 | 66.07 | -5.09 | -7.15 | Herbert Hoover |
| September 17, 2001 | 8,920.70 | -684.81 | -7.13 | George W. Bush |
As you can see, Trump is still lagging Herbert Hoover's five entries, and George W. Bush's four, although the way things are going, The Donald may soon claim the crown. That said, and we did not know this until we put this table together, the current president is apparently upholding a fine, and longstanding GOP tradition. Put another way: Man, there's a lot of red in that table. (Z)