It’s true that no president since World War II has won with an unemployment rate above 7.2 percent, but only two have tried. That two men failed to win a second term is hardly proof that this is some kind of dividing line in the politics of presidential elections. After all, these races are about lots and lots of things, and isolating a single factor — up to and including the unemployment rate — is a dangerous game.
And if we stretch the data back even further, to 1900 say, that dividing line is obliterated.
According to annual unemployment figures (monthly data are not available before 1948), Franklin Roosevelt won reelection twice with unemployment rates in the teens, and Republicans held on to the White House in 1908 when unemployment was at 8 percent.
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