Classical liberalism is fixed at the center. Each presidential election is scored from fourteen indicators: the national position (what policy actually was), with the two major parties placed around it. Every weight is adjustable, so a disagreement about the model becomes a disagreement about one slider.
2024
Weights
How the score is built
Economic score = −80 × weighted average of five penalties, each from 0 (classical liberal) to 1 (total state control): total government spending as a share of GDP (3% → 0, 60% → 1); top federal income tax rate (as a fraction); average tariff on dutiable imports (10% revenue tariff → 0, 60% → 1); monetary regime (coded: specie → fiat with an activist central bank); and regulatory reach (coded from landmark acts and agencies).
Personal score = −80 × (G + A × (1 − G)). G is the share of the population excluded from basic rights, times a severity for each group (enslaved; free Black people and Jim Crow; women without the vote). A is the weighted average of six restrictions that fall on everyone: speech and press, religious establishment and tests, conscription, vice prohibition, incarceration rate (700 per 100,000 → 1), and the surveillance and security state.
Parties are judged by results, not platforms. For the term after each election, the change in every indicator is split between parties by who enacted it (rules under Record by party). The arrows on the chart show that term's movement, tip to tail, colored by party. Changes driven by state governments (Jim Crow, disestablishment) follow federal control, which is a simplification.
Data quality in the table: plain = from a named data series; gray = estimated or interpolated; italic = coded judgment on a 0–1 scale. Coded values are the weakest part of the model.
Record by party
Each indicator's change in each term is credited to the party that enacted it. Unified control: 100% to that party. President and Congress of opposite parties: 50/50. Split Congress: two-thirds to the president's party. Named exceptions (acts passed over vetoes, bills passed on one party's votes, court rulings) override the default and are listed under each term. Positive numbers mean movement toward classical liberalism.
All indicators by election
Sources
- Top marginal income tax rates: Tax Policy Center, Historical Highest Marginal Income Tax Rates; Wolters Kluwer, historical income tax rates (Civil War rates).
- Government spending: Tax Foundation, A Short History of Government Taxing and Spending (1900, 1930, 2012); OMB Historical Table 15.3 (1948); Heritage, The Real Tax Burden (1960, 1982, 2000, 2023, pandemic peak); usgovernmentspending.com (1820). Other years are estimated from Wallis's long-run series and interpolated.
- Tariffs: Douglas Irwin, Historical Statistics of the US, Table Ee424–430 and NBER w9616 (1790–1820). Values here are approximate readings of that series. 2026: tariff history compilation (Yale Budget Lab and Penn Wharton estimates).
- Enslaved share of population: US decennial censuses 1790–1860, interpolated between censuses.
- Incarceration: Bureau of Justice Statistics prisoner series (approximate, 1925 on); earlier years estimated.
- Monetary regime, regulation, speech, religion, vice, surveillance, Jim Crow: coded by Claude from the landmark events listed in the notes.