Presidents are blamed for just about everything – especially during an election season. As the presidential debates of 2024 begin, the blame game is certain to be part of the spectacle. But presidents are not really responsible for as many things as voters, journalists or political opponents try to blame them for.

For the first time since 1912, a former president is a party’s presumptive nominee, running against the incumbent. Both men – Donald Trump and Joe Biden – have records from their time in the Oval Office of actions they have taken or not taken, and of problems they have been blamed for, whether they had any control over them or not.

In my own discipline of political science, there is a cottage industry of trying to predict presidential elections. These efforts look at a wide range of factors that, rightly or wrongly, are associated with, attributed to or blamed on the president, including the performance of the stock market, unemployment rates, consumer sentiment about the economy, and a variety of other measures related to economic output.

But these scholars, like the public at large, are trying to gauge how well a candidate will do based largely on factors presidents have little to no control over.

Making promises means taking the blame

The public demands action, and candidates promise it, but the presidency is an impossible office. It combines outsized expectations – which presidents themselves have embraced by campaigning as the voice of the whole country – with highly constrained political power in a system distinguished, currently, by gridlock.

At the debates, both Trump and Biden will likely speak of their records and make promises about what they would each do in their prospective second terms. But those goals will be largely out of reach without the support of Congress, which usually requires one party to hold both a majority in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. This is an unlikely outcome for either Biden or Trump.

The public pays little attention to the area where presidents have the most direct authority: foreign affairs.

Is it the economy?

In the current election campaign, the state of the national economy will undoubtedly be influential. But it is a complicated picture. Unemployment is low, the stock market is doing well, and inflation may be under control.

But higher prices are on voters’ minds. According to Gallup polling, the high cost of living is far and away Americans’ most important financial problem. A survey from April 2024 showed that 41% of the public volunteered that the high cost of living was their most important financial problem. That’s up 6 percentage points from when the same question was asked in 2023. In a distant second is the cost of housing.

In years past, the cost of living had hardly registered in the minds of Americans. From 2010 until 2021, the percentage of Americans identifying inflation as the most important financial problem was in the single digits. That percentage skyrocketed in 2022 and continued rising from there. This economic turmoil may be in the rearview mirror, but it has left much more expensive groceries on the shelves.

Recent evidence suggests that consumer confidence is on the rise. But that shift has not been beneficial to the incumbent president, because the public has not translated that to a more favorable view of Biden. It appears both that Americans are mildly optimistic about what is to come and that they remain jolted by the higher prices that took off in 2022.

Presidents can influence the economy, even without being able to control it. They can put into place a range of fiscal and regulatory policies, and can appoint Federal Reserve governors, who oversee monetary policy, including the widest-scale actions the government can take, including adjusting interest rates.

Additionally, presidents’ responses to crises, both domestic and abroad, may also shape how people feel about the economy.

While some studies have found that the economy performs better under Democratic presidents, the mechanisms are murky. One study concluded that the partisan differences in economic performance did not stem from different policy approaches but rather factors such as oil shocks, growth of defense spending and stronger economic growth abroad.

This imbalance between expectations of voters and limited powers of the presidency underscores the important role of presidential rhetoric and the media in linking presidents to the economy. Presidents often feel their economic accomplishments are undermined by the media. In December 2023, Biden implored reporters to “start reporting it the right way” when asked about the economic outlook.

What happens locally can color people’s views

The overall national picture isn’t the only view voters take. Many people form their views based on what they witness in their daily lives.

A decade ago, a colleague and I found that gas prices, home foreclosure rates and local unemployment levels in a voter’s community were influential in shaping their perceptions of the national economy, which in turn affects voting for president.

In other research, I’ve shown that factors like local unemployment, federal spending in one’s community and federal responsiveness in the aftermath of a natural disaster drive support for incumbent presidents among affected communities.

This research helps explain why Americans may not broadly agree about how well the nation is doing.

Some expectations are clearly unfounded

Voters – and experts – don’t always agree on the connection between government policies and actions and specific real-world outcomes. Did Trump’s immigration policies make the nation better off? Did Biden’s? These questions are not easily answered. Citizens rely on many sources, but especially the media, to figure out the connections and the results.

Voters also change their views of presidents for events well beyond a president’s control – such as when a local college football or basketball team wins a game right before an election, or even the occurrence of a natural disaster.

One study even found evidence that voters blamed President Woodrow Wilson for shark attacks off the coast of New Jersey in 1916.

Other research indicates that voters ignore long-term trends and instead base their votes primarily on events immediately preceding an election. For instance, the nation may see substantial economic gains over a president’s four-year term, but if growth slows or reverses before the election, the president may not reap the electoral benefits.

And partisan polarization means some voters may set aside their own knowledge and experience and blame the president, or a candidate, for almost anything.

Random events can showcase leadership or lack thereof

Election Day falls during hurricane season, and political news can be affected by a big storm.

In 2012, Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast in late October as the presidential campaigns were in their final sprint. The storm gave incumbent President Barack Obama the chance to burnish his credential in ways both big – by coordinating the federal response – and small – by comforting the affected communities and meeting with Republican and Democratic leaders. Some research shows that Obama received votes based on his response to Sandy.

Presidents have no power to control the weather or to cause a natural disaster to strike a particular location. However, they do have control over the political response to the event. As my research shows, demonstrating leadership and even, on occasion, engaging in bipartisan cooperation can reveal information about the quality of an elected official and potentially influence votes.

It just goes to show that the election could be influenced more by a random act of Mother Nature in the fall than the debates in June.

There’s a widespread view that populism is on the rise, from the United States and Turkey to India and Hungary.

What is fueling this movement?

Populism is a political ideology that positions “the people” as a morally just, good group in society, in contrast with other people who are elitist and out of touch with society. Politicians such as former President Donald Trump have used this general approach to help propel their rise to power – and maintain their popularity among their supporters.

Trump, for example, described his political campaign in June 2024 as an “epic struggle to liberate our nations from all of the sinister forces who want to destroy them.” These “sinister forces” typically include everything from the media and international organizations to mainstream science and immigrants.

And Viktor Orbán, the populist prime minister of Hungary since 2010, often blames international groups such as foreign nonprofits for interfering in Hungarian politics and acting against the country’s interests.

The European Parliament determined in 2022 that Hungary could no longer be considered a democracy.

In its most radical, authoritarian form, populism poses a threat to democracy. It polarizes societies and erodes trust in experts.

But populist leaders still hold appeal, as they promise to return power to the people.

Yet they often deliver something very different from what they promise. They tend to worsen problems such as gender and ethnic inequality, without addressing the gap between the rich and the poor.

I have dedicated much of my career to analyzing populist movements, both as a politician serving in the Hungarian Parliament in opposition to Orbán’s regime and now as a scholar.

This unique experience has taught me one thing: Protecting democracy from populism requires first understanding its root causes.

What’s behind populism

Many journalists and political scientists view populism as a “cultural backlash” of conservative white men who fear the loss of their privilege in a diversifying world.

Immigration, race and religion are three issues that are often central to many populists’ politics. There are also economic factors such as a poor economy, international trade, industrial robots and artificial intelligence that some experts think also contribute to the rise of populism.

This is because the growth of artificial intelligence, for example, has led to the reduction of stable jobs in sectors such as manufacturing, which once gave working-class people a pathway to social mobility.

Many pundits and scholars still question whether the economy plays a significant role in populism. This argument takes various forms, but it typically boils down to statements like this one, made by a prominent political scientist about the 2016 U.S. presidential election: “Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote.”

In other words, the 2016 presidential vote was influenced by white voters’ fears about losing their dominant status in society rather than because of their financial struggles – at least according to this argument.

It’s the economy

My recent research shows a different source of anxiety behind growing support for populism: people’s concerns about economic insecurity are a crucial factor driving populism in Europe, North America and Latin America.

For example, Americans who lost their jobs in the manufacturing industry in the 2010s were especially likely to abandon the Democratic Party and vote for Trumpin 2016.

There is evidence that people’s anti-immigration attitudes are also fueled by their anxiety about their own jobs.

Research also shows that Europeans who lost their jobs or whose earnings were reduced because of competition with low-wage immigrant workers, for example, were more likely to feel threatened by globalization. They were also especially likely to embrace nationalism and vote for populist right-wing candidates throughout Western Europe.

Populist voters in the US

Still, research shows that not all populist voters can be lumped under the same umbrella. Populist voters are a diverse group with various motivations and concerns.

For example, artificial intelligence threatens jobs more in the U.S. and in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe, making Americans and Western Europeans more concerned about this issue than Eastern Europeans.

Race is another factor. Some white voters facing financial hardship may feel as if immigrants and people of color are responsible for taking the available jobs – and are to blame for their economic woes.

Populism is not just about conservative white men, however, despite the popular support Trump holds among many in this group. For example, Democratic politicians in the U.S. have increasingly struggled to win the support of working-class voters without a college degree, including a growing number of Black voters.

Black voters still generally vote for Democrats. But the Democratic Party has seen about a 28 percentage point decrease in Black voters between 2020 and 2024. Most of them switched to become Republicans.

This voter realignment has been occurring since 2008. When Trump was elected in 2016, he not only increased his party’s support among the white working class by four percentage points from GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat, he also increased support among Black working-class voters by the same amount. This shift suggests that the Democrats have a working-class problem and not a white working-class problem. Economic factors, rather than just racial identity, are a major factor driving voters away from the Democratic Party.

Not all populist voters are extremists

Many media outlets tend to focus on core populist voters, who are masters of causing outrage with what one populism scholar calls “bad manners.” In this context, that means using inflammatory language or making politically incorrect statements, among other tactics, to draw attention to their cause.

The most successful populist political movements in places such as Italy and Poland, however, have grown by appealing to voters concerned with bread-and-butter issues. They combine the core group of populist voters, who are motivated by culture and racism, and an outer group of voters who are not primarily motivated by these issues.

Finally, voters’ support for populist leaders also depends on how nonpopulist, mainstream politicians appeal to them. Inclusive socioeconomic policies, such as expanding unemployment insurance, for example, can help stave off a populist surge.

The way ahead

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the challenge of populism. For example, job guarantee programs help provide stable work, reducing the economic insecurity that often fuels populist sentiment.

In an economy characterized by gig work and people frequently moving from one job to another, portable benefits that workers carry from job to job – giving them continuous access to health care, retirement savings and other benefits – may help alleviate the anxieties that drive people to populism.

Boosting affordable housing and controlling rents can also promote more stable living conditions.

I think countering right-wing populism demands a concerted effort to tackle the economic insecurity that fuels this global phenomenon. The path forward may be challenging, but the alternative, a world where democracy is eroded and societies are polarized, is even more frightening.