Macro-Economic Contractions, Social-Welfare Programs & Congressional Election Outcomes

Abstract

Since Gerald Krammer's pioneering work, the influence of macroeconomic conditions on the partisan division of the national congressional vote has been studied extensively.' With few exceptions these studies find that the congressional party of the incumbent president is punished for economic contractions which occur during the year prior to an election. Moreover, many find that the incumbent president's congressional party is rewarded for an economic expansion during this same period. Beyond these general conclusions, the literature is marked by controversy and contradictory findings, stemming in part from the use of different variables, models, and statistical procedures. However, all of these studies share at least one common feature. They all assume that the impact of economic conditions is constant over time. That is, they assume that an economic contraction of similar magnitude in 1898 and 1962, for example, would cause the presidential party's share of the congressional vote to fall below its normal level by similar margins. But this assumption fails to note that the context within which macroeconomic conditions are experienced have changed over time. One important contextual change is the creation of a social-welfare state. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that the level of economic deprivation that individuals experience during periods of economic contraction and the anxieties they feel about their economic situation during such periods