Economic Conditions and Electoral Outcomes: Class Differences in the Political Response to Recession

Abstract

Politicians and journalists appreciate the fact that economic conditions are politically important because voters punish national administrations for bad macroeconomic policy performance. Nevertheless, scholars have been divided over the question whether economic conditions affect voters' choices of candidates in elections. The weight of results from aggregate studies suggests that economic downturns do have political costs but research at this level allows no unique specification of individual response patterns. Using data from the 1956-60 American panel study, data which span the worst recession (to that time) since the Great Depression, this paper attempts to specify the sources of political responses to the recessions of 1958 and 1960. Relative to middle class individuals, working class citizens are more severely affected by economic cycles, and they are found to provide the bulk of the electoral response to economic recession.