Irwin Kellner, chief economist for MarketWatch and Distinguished Scholar of Economics at Dowling College in Oakdale, N.Y.:

Historically, the economy performs better when a Democrat is in the White House than when a Republican is president. Here are some examples, by my calculations, for full four-year periods from 1948 through 2004:

Unemployment has averaged 4.6% when a Democrat is in the oval office and 6.2% under a Republican administrator.

The stock market has risen 46% under a Democratic president and 32% with a Republican in the Oval Office.

The U.S. budget deficit has averaged $11 billion under a Democratic president, compared with $163 billion when the president was a Republican.

The trade deficit has averaged $83 billion when a Democrat was in the White House and $117 billion under a Republican president.

To the average person on the street, the economy feels and looks better under a Democrat. For a company, it is slightly better off under a Republican.

I don’t like small samples like this, I think a lot of this (other than the U.S. budget deficits, which is very telling here) are due primarily to luck, and the argument that national policies often take more than four years to work through the economy is easy to make, but these numbers are interesting nonetheless.