Whether you watched the never-ending television news cycle or happened to have a crystal ball, chances are you
still couldn’t predict exactly what was going to happen heading into Election Day. While market strategists and economists regularly ignore election polls and personal characteristics of candidates, they tend to focus on models using historical trends and then add in key economic data, including growth rates, wages, unemployment, inflation and gas prices to predict voting behavior and election outcomes. However, 2020 was unlike any year we’ve seen before. Coming off a presidential impeachment in 2019, an international pandemic, soaring unemployment rates and a recession affecting nearly every corner of the U.S. in 2020, even the country’s brightest strategists had a difficult time predicting the outcome of the 2020 election.
