“Did Voting Differently Really Help? - Lessons from 2016 & 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections”

Voting is a crucial phenomenon in a democratic nation. While making decisions on whom to vote, voters take many indicators into consideration. They sometimes change their voting decision than the previous election in the hope that their economic condition will be better off. Here I investigate whether this change in the decision was worth it in terms of the real GDP growth rate. For the election years of 2016 and 2008, I analyze whether a change in the election- outcome affects the real GDP growth rate in comparison with a no-change-in-outcome counterfactual. Starting from the basic difference-indifference method, I applied the trajectory balancing method which is like the predictive machine learning modeling in spirit. I find that a change in the election-outcome is associated with lower real GDP growth rate for both 2016 and 2008 election-years