The only thing that matters during a presidential election year is the economy. And the word “economy” is really a different way of saying: “How are people doing?”

All the political theater we are now experiencing will be ignored if families are better off than they were four years ago. And there’s no better time to judge that than during gift-giving season.

The latest figures from the US Commerce Department say Americans are doing pretty good right now.

The government announced last week that personal spending in November climbed a strong 0.4 percent from the previous month. That was the fastest pace of growth since July.

And October’s spending was 0.3 percent better than September’s.

Good news! We’ll take it. But there was more.

People were able to spend at that pace because incomes allegedly rose 0.5 percent in November, compared to expectations of just a 0.3 percent increase. And the zero gain in incomes in October was revised to an increase of 0.1 percent.

Also good news. On those numbers alone, the president is in good shape.

But there is this other study I’d like to tell you about — and it may add to the great news for the president, or actually be a bad sign.

This additional data comes from a survey by personal finance site Bankrate.com, which from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1 surveyed 1,000 people about whether they got pay increases last year.

The results of that survey were also relatively good. Overall, 49 percent of those who were asked said they had received a pay increase of some sort over the past 12 months.

That’s up from just 38 percent in 2018. And those were the best results since 2016.

If you want to bring politics into this, 49 percent of Republicans surveyed also said they had more confidence in the job market, compared with 26 percent of political independents and 19 percent of Democrats.

Ah, but when you look at the guts of the Bankrate survey, you find something curious.

The pay raises went to people in higher income brackets. Fifty-five percent of people making $50,000 or more a year saw their pay increase compared with only 43 percent who make less than that.

Now I’m getting to the curious part and the thing that makes me wonder if the Bankrate survey, the government’s polling or neither is accurate.

Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of people earning $30,000 or less said they saw no increase in their income over the last 12 months.

These people make up a big voting bloc. So what they are feeling financially is very important.

How could that last number — 64 percent — be right? Eighteen states raised their minimum wages at the start of 2019, and that should have given the lowest-paid workers a boost. Five more states have minimum wage increases coming soon.

Those minimum wage boosts would have resulted in automatic pay increases, and that should have been reflected in the Bankrate survey.

So the good numbers that Bankrate reported probably should have been even better. (Bankrate said it didn’t ask people if they got increases because of minimum wage boosts.)

I also wonder about the 0.5 percent increase that the government’s survey reported for November. If wages kept up that pace, it would mean people are getting hikes of 6 percent a year.

And 6 percent pay hikes would create all kinds of trouble for those worried about inflation — meaning those folks at the Federal Reserve we care so much about.

Now for some of the political theater that investors will have to deal with for at least the next 11 months.

Wall Street is getting a break right now because President Trump’s impeachment is delayed until the Democrats can get around to it — after they’ve opened their Christmas presents and heard from their constituents.

When Washington turns on the lights again, there are going to be fireworks.

As I’ve been telling you, some very top government officials from the Obama era are in trouble. And Attorney General William Barr pretty much pointed them out over the last few weeks.

Big guys — James Comey, former FBI head, and John Brennan, ex-director of the CIA, to name two — seem to be in big trouble.

Comey especially has seemed to piss Barr off for trying to pass the buck to underlings for the disastrous Russian election interference investigation.

“It was run and bird-dogged by a very small group of very high-level officials,” said Barr on Fox recently. That’s another way of saying that Comey is in trouble.

Back in the summer of 2016, I wrote that Comey and just three other people inside the FBI had decided to give Hillary Clinton a pass on her deeds related to missing emails and such. Many others inside the FBI quietly objected.

That’s exactly what Barr is talking about. Just a handful of people, Comey included, were making decisions about prosecutions — or not — that should have been handled by the Justice Department, not the FBI.

Anyway, here’s what Wall Street needs to worry about.

As Barr and US Attorney John Durham, who is looking deeply into wrongdoing during the last presidential election, ramp up their probes, the Democrats will also have to crank it up.

So far, investors have been handling the impeachment and investigations well — probably too well.

But the chaos has only just begun. Wall Street can expect many tricky days between now and next November.