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Super Tuesday, the day on which the largest number of US states hold presidential primaries, is almost upon us. The results are baked in — Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be the winners. But the primaries may give us insight into the divide between what data shows, particularly the economic variety, and the felt experience of the voting public.
“超级星期二”即将到来，这一天是美国最多州举行总统初选的日子。结果已经毫无悬念——唐纳德•特朗普和乔•拜登将成为赢家。但初选可能会让我们深入了解数据显示的事实——尤其是经济方面的变化——与选民的感受之间的鸿沟。
One of the biggest mysteries of this campaign season has been why Joe Biden has not been given more credit for America’s booming economy. Gross domestic product is up, inflation is down and the jobs market could hardly be better. And yet, consumer sentiment remains low and that will probably be reflected in Tuesday’s exit polls, which survey not only which candidates voters chose, but why.
这个竞选季最大的谜团之一是，为什么乔•拜登没有因为美国蓬勃发展的经济而被给予更多认可。国内生产总值(GDP)上升，通胀下降，就业市场好得不能再好了。然而，消费者情绪仍然低迷，这可能将反映在周二的出口民调中，这些民调不仅调查选民选择哪些候选人，还调查选择的原因。
I suspect those polls will tell us that economic data and voters’ felt experience are in collision with each other, or, at the very least, not correlated in the ways that we might imagine.
我怀疑这些民意调查将告诉我们，经济数据和选民的感受是相互冲突的，或者至少不像我们想象的那样相互关联。
Take inflation. Yes, it’s been cooling, even as unemployment remains low and wages edge up. And yet, people don’t feel consumer price index numbers. They feel the cumulative hit from how prices of groceries, rent, gas, electricity, car insurance and other necessities have risen by more than 20 per cent in the past two or three years.
以通胀为例。没错，通胀一直在降温，尽管失业率仍然很低，工资也在慢慢上涨。然而，人们感受到的不是消费者价格指数数字。他们感受到的是食品杂货、租金、汽油、电力、汽车保险和其他必需品价格过去两三年上涨逾20%所带来的累积打击。
For most Americans, particularly younger and more vulnerable ones, the felt experience of inflation isn’t, “Hey, things are expensive but prices rises are coming down and I have more money in my pocket.” It’s anger. As Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg puts it, “My key learning [during this campaign season] has been that even when you come out of an inflationary period, people stay angry for a long time.”
对大多数美国人，尤其是年轻和更弱势群体来说，他们对通胀的感受并不是，“嘿，东西很贵，但价格涨幅正在下降，我口袋里的钱更多了。”它是愤怒。正如民主党民调专家斯坦•格林伯格所说，“我（在这个竞选季节）的关键领悟是，即使你走出了通胀期，人们也会在很长一段时间内保持愤怒。”
That lingering pessimism is compounded by the fact that generational economic shifts (such as inflation moving above 5 per cent, which hadn’t happened since 2008) tend to imprint on people for the rest of their lives. Indeed, there is research to show that even one really tough year experienced in early adulthood is enough to change behaviour for a lifetime.
加剧这种挥之不去的悲观情绪的是，代际经济变化（比如通胀率超过5%，这是2008年以来从未发生过的）往往会在人们的余生中留下印记。事实上，有研究表明，即使在成年早期经历过一年非常艰难的情况，也足以改变一生的行为。
I think of my British grandmother, a nurse in the second world war, who would use a tea bag multiple times. Or conversely, my boomer parents, who feel comfortable carrying a mortgage well into their retirement. Feelings drive our economic decisions, and our voting.
我想起了我的英国祖母，她是二战时期的一名护士，会重复多次泡一个茶包。或者反过来，我的婴儿潮一代父母，他们觉得在退休后还负担房贷是舒适的。感受驱动着我们的经济决策以及投票。
I suspect that this truth will be reflected not only in perceptions of prices, but also around migration and border security, which loom large as an election issue. Immigrants have, of course, always been core to America’s economic success (their impact is a net positive at both the high and low ends of the socio-economic spectrum). There’s even new evidence that suggests foreign-born workers are a key reason why labour inflation hasn’t been higher.
我怀疑，这一事实不仅会反映在对价格的感受上，还会反映在移民和边境安全问题上，这些问题在选举中占据重要地位。当然，移民一直是美国经济成功的核心(他们对社会经济光谱的高端和低端的影响都是积极的)。甚至有新的证据表明，外国出生的工人是劳动力通胀没有走高的一个关键原因。
That includes legal as well as illegal immigrants. A recent Strategas Research Partners report on how “big immigration” is key to understanding US growth notes that: “To the extent US immigration has been tough to fully measure in recent years, the reported data [showing the disinflationary impact of migration] may be underestimating this boost.”
这包括合法的以及非法移民。Strategas Research Partners最近发布的一份关于“大规模移民”是理解美国经济增长的关键的报告指出：“就近年来美国移民很难完全衡量的程度而言，报告的数据（显示移民的反通胀影响）可能低估了这一推动力。”
It continues: “The policy enacted by some states to relocate migrants from the southern border to larger cities may have also had the (likely unintended) effect of matching individuals to regions where there was an ability to work, even if informally.”
报告继续写道：“一些州制定的将移民从南部边境迁移到大城市的政策，可能也产生了（可能是意想不到的）效果，将个人与有工作岗位的地区相匹配，即使是非正式地。”
I certainly see that when I look around New York. Yes, we have major issues housing migrants, but we also have a huge pool of informal labourers keeping service costs down in areas such as restaurants and the care economy. I’d love to see fast-tracking of formal work permits for migrants who can fill gaps in tight labour markets. But I’m in the minority; 61 per cent of Americans — and 91 per cent of Republicans — consider illegal immigration a “very serious” problem.
当我在纽约环顾四周时，我当然看到了这一点。是的，我们在为移民提供住房方面存在重大问题，但我们也有大量的非正规劳动力，降低了餐馆和护理经济等领域的服务成本。我希望看到移民能够快速获得正式工作许可，以填补紧张的劳动力市场的空缺。但我属于少数派；61%的美国人——以及和91%的共和党人——认为非法移民是一个“非常严重”的问题。
That divide reflects perhaps the most important way in which feelings rather than facts dictate political reality today — the growing partisan divide in economic perceptions. A study published in 2022 by Stanford and New York University scholars found that the gap in how Democrats and Republicans viewed the same economic data doubled between 1999 and 2020. Both parties have moved equally away from the baseline views of independent voters. We’re all partisans now.
这种分歧或许反映了感受而非事实决定当今政治现实的最重要方式——经济观念上的不断加剧的党派分歧。斯坦福大学(Stanford)和纽约大学(New York University)的学者在2022年发表的一项研究发现，1999年至2020年间，民主党和共和党对相同经济数据的看法差距翻了一番。两党都同等程度地偏离了独立选民的基本观点。我们现在都是党派人士了。
What’s more, the divide tends to increase during times of economic recovery, like the Obama years following the great financial crisis, or the Biden boom of today. The study’s authors posit that this may be “because ideologues of all stripes can find economic data or views that flatter their political beliefs”.
更重要的是，在经济复苏时期，这种分歧往往会扩大，比如金融危机后的奥巴马时期，或者今天的拜登繁荣时期。该研究的作者认为，这可能是因为“各种各样的理论家都能找到迎合他们政治信仰的经济数据或观点”。
That certainly rings true to me. Consider that economically distressed counties representing 8 per cent of US GDP have received 16 per cent of strategic sector investments in things such as clean energy and semiconductors since 2021, thanks to the Biden administration’s focus on place-based economics. Yet because these are long-term plays that take years to funnel through into a felt experience in these communities, many of the people who live in those places may still vote Trump.
这对我来说当然是真的。考虑到自2021年以来，由于拜登政府对地方经济的关注，占美国GDP 8%的经济困难县在清洁能源和半导体等领域获得了16%的战略部门投资。然而，由于这些都是长期投资，需要数年的时间才能渗透到这些社区的感受中，许多生活在这些地方的人可能仍然会投票给特朗普。
The facts of Super Tuesday are a known quantity. Instead watch the feelings, and what they might tell us about November.
超级星期二的事实是众所周知的。相反，我们应该关注感受，以及它们可能告诉我们的关于11月的情况。