This election season, when pollsters have asked voters what their most important issue is, again and again, they've said the economy.

And asked how they feel about that economy, the answer for a lot of them is bad - that is, despite some positive economic trends, the vibes are just off.

For example, in a recent Guardian poll, half of those surveyed said the stock market is down this year... Even though it's actually way up.

Half also think unemployment is at 50-year highs... Even though it's been near 50-year lows. And a lot of people think we're in a recession...

Even though we're not. And what's more, many voters blame President Biden for this.

People have a fairly bleak outlook, despite, you know, strong growth, strong unemployment numbers, strong job numbers.

People are blaming Biden for things like increased prices, or they blame Biden for the fact that they can't buy a home.

That's NPR's senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.

He says at the same time many voters are dinging Biden for the economy under his watch, many feel the opposite way about former President Trump.

People have a bit of nostalgia for the Trump presidency and the Trump economy pre-COVID.

The economy goes up. It goes down. Sometimes it goes sideways... And in circles... And twirling and twirling towards freedom.

But how much of that is actually because of the president? Today on the show, why the economy is like a ship with no captain and how tribalism increasingly shapes how we feel about the direction it's headed.

So how much credit or blame should a president get for the state of the economy?

History shows presidents get more credit than they deserve when things go well and more blame than they deserve when things don't go well. Alan Blinder is an economist at Princeton.

And once upon a time, a long time ago, I was vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. And you also did some work during the Clinton administration - is that right?

Yes. Before that, I was on President Clinton's original Council of Economic Advisers right at the start of the Clinton administration.

Why do you emphasize original there? Because that's the best time to be on it... Before the bureaucracy has a chance to ossify.

You know, in my lowly position as just a member of the CEA, I was in dozens and dozens of meetings with the president, face to face.

Alan Blinder, an OG presidential economic adviser. An original. But, you know, somewhat ironically, he says the president doesn't have much direct control over the economy.

If you look at what power does the U.S. president actually have over the economy, it's fairly limited. I don't want to say it's zero, but it's fairly limited.

The chairman of the Federal Reserve has more power over the U.S. economy than the president of the United States.

Because the Federal Reserve can adjust interest rates, which has all kinds of ripple effects in the economy.

That's exactly - can and does and doesn't ask for permission from Congress when it does that.

The Fed is independent of Congress and the president, though it is worth mentioning, back in April, The Wall Street Journal reported that close Trump allies have drafted a plan to bring the Fed under more presidential control if Trump is elected.

As of now, though, that is not the case. The president's ability to affect the economy is indirect. A president can, for instance, direct federal agencies to do certain things.

Like, the Biden administration has the Federal Trade Commission, which has gone after so-called junk fees and sued big companies for allegedly anticompetitive conduct.

The Education Department has tried to forgive student loans, and the Labor Department has expanded eligibility for overtime pay.

But these sorts of actions are unlikely to have a huge effect on the overall economy, especially when presidents and their priorities change every few years.

I have this image in my mind of the economy as, like, a giant tanker ship, where the captain changes every hour. I would tweak a couple of things. OK.

First of all, I think your analogy is fine. It is like a giant tanker ship that generally moves slowly. That says, to really move it, you have to do something big.

Second thing is there's not one captain of this ship. Business decisions are really more important than government decisions.

And even within the government decisions, the Federal Reserve is more important than the White House.

Congress, if it acts - which, of course, lately, it doesn't - can be more important than the president 'cause the Congress has the power of the purse.

The president can champion legislation that gives a boost to certain industries or communities.

Biden did that with the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure bill and the CHIPS and Science Act. But he could not do that without Congress.

So back to our analogy - rather than one captain controlling the ship, it's more like the Fed has the handle on the throttle.

And the president maybe has a hand on the wheel, and businesses are in the engine room. I don't know. Darian, help me out.

The bunkhouse (ph) is playing light jazz in the dining room. You've elevated our status on this ship.

Now, even though the president doesn't have much direct control of the economy, that doesn't mean a president's actions can't be economically consequential.

Alan and his colleague, Mark Watson, published a study that looked at economic growth under 12 different presidents - from President Truman in the 1940s to President Obama in the 2010s.

And what they found was that, during Democratic administrations, real GDP grew almost 4.5 % on average, while only grew 2.5% under Republican presidents. It's a pretty big difference.

So if a president has relatively little control over the economy, how does that square with what you found in your study - that the economy seems to do better during Democratic administrations?

Well, that's a very good question. That's why the paper was 40 pages, not two pages. We spent most of the paper trying to figure that out.

Alan says, partly, it was just chance. But after eliminating a bunch of other explanations, they concluded that a big factor was that,

under certain Republican presidents, like the Presidents Bushes (ph), the country began two wars in the Middle East which caused a shock in the oil supply, which hurt economic growth.

And so while I said there's not that much in the economic domain a president can do with Congress, there's a lot of president can do in the foreign policy and defense domain.

Even so, this is another example of how the president's influence on the economy is indirect, even if many voters believe otherwise.

Either way, Domenico Montanaro from NPR's political desk says there is another important piece to this. We've seen people over the past year feel a little bit better about the economy.

But mostly, you have to understand this through politics and the idea that people view everything nowadays through their own partisan party identification - because just look at the numbers.

I mean, feelings about the economy have become far more partisan. Hasn't that always been the case?

To an extent, yes, but this is a relatively new phenomenon - I mean, at least in the last 20 years - where, before that, you generally saw feelings of the economy mostly track with how things were going economically - not simply be based so sharply on the party of the person in office.

When a Democrat is in office, Democratic voters tend to say the economy is doing better. But Domenico says, with Republicans, it's way more pronounced.

Right at the tail end of the Obama administration, 18% of Republicans had a positive view of the economy - that the economy was excellent or good - according to the Pew Research Center.

During the Trump administration, 81% of Republicans said that the economy was excellent or good - 63-point swing.

The economy wasn't that much better, right? And, you know, things were ticking up, but it was not that kind of switch.

I've heard this described as Republicans boo louder when it comes to economics - as in they're on the stands, and they are going at it against the opposing team.

That sounds like an apt description. And I think we should acknowledge at this point that, in the presidential race, there's been a lot of talk about Biden - whether he will stay in it or not.

But whoever tops the ticket this fall, Domenico says the economy will continue to be a top issue, and people's political loyalties will continue to sway whether they see the economy through red- or blue-colored glasses.