Economic conditions and government popularity in Great Britain, 1956?1983

Abstract

This paper investigates the temporal structure of the effects of economic conditions on voting intentions. It argues that different specifications will be appropriate depending on the ways in which voters receive information on economic conditions. For the data used here, the specification used in nearly all previous research—the geometric distributed lag—performs less well than alternatives, and the choice significantly affects model stability and the significance of particular independent variables. The results suggest several conclusions about voters' knowledge and rationality, which may be tested with individual level data.