What Fundamental Factors Shape Elections?

Abstract This chapter reviews the fundamental elements that shape all elections in the United States, not just the 2020 presidential contest. These fundamentals include the state of the national economy, the president’s popularity, whether the country is at war or peace, and the balance of partisanship in the US electorate. It also discusses consequential changes, such as the strengthening of partisanship and related group identity primes, that circumscribe how these fundamental factors play out in contemporary elections. The chapter also explains how partisanship and identity-protective cognition shaped our panelists’ responses to the four crises on which the book focuses.