in the end, we are left with MAGA having false views of great personal prosperity under trump, and equally certain of being in absolute poverty now.

I mean, it's pretty a pretty simple heuristic though, right?

People look back at their situation just prior to the pandemic, and it looks pretty good. Gas prices were about $2.50, mortgage rates were about 3.5%, inflation was at about 2.3%, unemployment was low and GDP growth was solid. Not just in early 2020 before the pandemic - that pretty much describes most of the first three Trump years. Now, prices and interest rates are higher, we've gone through very high inflation (and the rate, even after falling a lot, is still higher than through most of the Trump years). High interest rates especially are tough on younger folks, who face dramatically higher costs of housing.

The "are you better off than you were four years ago" question is a wonderful rhetorical device, because it primes the voter to assign to the incumbent Administration blame for everything that happened during their time in office - whether it's the result of them doing a bad job or not. It's outcome oriented - not asking whether they like the policies or governing skills of the incumbent, but whether their personal situation is better or not. Only something as dramatically outside the control of the government as the pandemic breaks that heuristic.

That's why there's so many people that give the GOP higher marks on the economy. If there was a button that they could push to revert the macroeconomy back to Q4 2019, they'd push it in a heartbeat - and so that button gets mapped (in their minds) onto putting the GOP back into power.