By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College

It wasn’t long after the election returns came in that people began to speculate about stock market returns. There’s a myth that they are much higher under a Republican Administration than a Democratic Administration. I investigate to see if that is the case, using data dating throughout the 1900s, as well as looking at some contemporary cases.

“I hear that stocks are jumping now that Trump won,” a fellow parishioner told me on Sunday at church.

“They’re up a little under one percent,” I noted, having looked at the data recently.

That’s not too bad, but it wasn’t the answer I think he wanted. “But they’re in record territory now.”

“True,” I noted. “It’s been that way much of the Biden Administration.”

Again, I don’t think that’s the answer he was looking for.

We firmly plant in our minds that stocks do better under Republicans because we think of them as the pro-business party, and they must be doing more for business, thus leading to the better returns. Democrats are more likely to support labor, and focusing more on higher taxes to spread the wealth around. So therefore, we think that returns would be lower under Democratic Party leadership.

So I researched the return on all presidents from 1904 (Teddy Roosevelt) to 2024 (Joe Biden) on Yahoo Finance, and this is what I found.

On average, stocks rose about 8.08 percent under Republicans, and 12.44 percent under Democrats between 1904 and 2024.

I bet you weren’t expecting that one.

Trump weighed in with 16 percent returns, twice the GOP average, but ended on a sour note during the pandemic. Hopefully, we can expect something more like the years before that.

Now the highest gains were posted by Calvin Coolidge (29 percent) but under Herbert Hoover, much of that was given back (28 percent losses between 1929 and 1933). People claim that FDR didn’t do much or the New Deal was blocked, but stock market returns were up 13 percent and 15 percent under Truman.

Republicans were weighed down in the analysis by Hoover, as well as Nixon (negative one percent) and Bush Jr. (negative four percent), balanced by double digit gains under Reagan and Bush Sr. Democrats were bumped up by Carter (15 percent), Clinton (15 percent), Obama (17 percent) and Biden (14 percent).

Luckily for Republicans, the difference of means test between the 12 GOP Administrations and nine Democratic Party Administrations was not statistically significant, meaning that while the returns were better under Democrats, it was close enough to not make a huge difference. But the evidence does bust the myth that Republicans produce better stock returns.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.