Stock Market Under Obama: Are Democrats Or Republicans Better For The Dow Jones? Comparing George W Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr, Reagan

The GOP has long been considered the party of Wall Street with the belief that the stock market performs better under Republicans than Democrats. The statistics, however, paint a much different picture.

With only one full day left in office, President Barack Obama has overseen a sharp bull market in nearly eight years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 19,804.72 on Wednesday, a sharp rise of almost 140 percent since the Democrat's Inauguration Day in 2009. And the Dow is up about 210 percent in Obama's term when starting from March 2009, when the economy was showing signs of recovering from the September 2008 crash.

The stock market may not be so strong under Republican President-elect Donald Trump, though some investors may feel encouraged by his pledge for corporate tax reform while launching a fiscal spending program. In December, Trump named billionaire investor Carl Icahn as a special adviser for overhauling federal regulations.

In order for Trump to outperform Obama, the Dow would have to reach almost 50,000 over eight years. Trump has pledged to "Make American Great Again," but if the last 36 years is any indication of what to expect from the Dow, he will fall short of his Democrat predecessors.

Measuring the Dow from recent presidents' Inauguration Day to their last day in office, it seems Democrats Obama and Bill Clinton strongly outperformed their Republican counterparts Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Among Republicans, Reagan saw the sharpest rise of 135 percent from 1981 to 1989, though he falls just short when compared to Obama's 140 percent. George H.W. Bush finished second among Republicans with a 45 percent gain from 1989 to 1993. George W. Bush had by far the worst performance, with a loss of 25 percent from 2001 to 2009.

Meanwhile, Clinton saw the sharpest gain of any of the recent presidents. He entered the White House with the Dow at 3,242 and saw it balloon to 10,588, which amounts to an increase of 227 percent.

But do presidents deserve credit for how well stocks perform? Many say they do in fact influence the market, but don't have much of an overall impact. In April, famed billionaire investor Warren Buffett said it didn't matter for the markets if Trump or Hillary Clinton won the election because the economy was moving in the right direction.

"No presidential candidate or president is going to end it," Buffett said.