Economic Voting Theory Research Articles

„It’s the economy, stupid!“ – eller „Crisis? What Crisis?“

To what extent was the government blamed for the economic crisis of 2008-2009, and to what extent did it displace other issues from the agenda of Danish voters? e decline in GDP in Denmark was among the most serious in the world but most voters underestimated its depth. Using the theory of economic voting and quantitative data, it is shown that the crisis had surprisingly little impact. It is indicated that lack of media attention and of politicisation of the responsibility for the crisis played a major role.

Response Order, Party Choice, and Evaluations of the National Economy: A Survey Experiment

We present the results of a survey experiment in which we manipulate the order that respondents are administered vote choice and economic evaluation items. Our findings add to the growing body of evidence which suggests that survey respondents tacitly align evaluations of the national economy with previously stated attitudes and behaviour. Our results have implications for theories of economic voting and for the design of national election study questionnaires.

The Hispanic Vote in the 2004 Presidential Election: Insecurity and Moral Concerns

This paper examines Hispanic voting behavior in the 2004 Presidential election. Our research makes a significant contribution to the literature on Hispanic politics, as this is the first study to apply theories of issue and economic voting to a nationwide sample of Hispanic voters. We demonstrate that, similar to Anglos, issues and ideology were highly influential in the vote choice of Hispanics in the 2004 election. However, using the best available data on Hispanic voting behavior for this election, a statewide aggregation of the National Election Pool (NEP), we demonstrate that in this election Hispanic voters placed more emphasis on moral values issues and national security than on traditional domestic issues such as the economy and education. This accounted for Republican gains beyond the overall increase in Bush’s vote share from 2000 to 2004. We also show that moral values and national security had roughly equal importance in Bush’s victory.

Empirical investigation of party preferences and economic voting in Turkey

Abstract. This article examines the factors that shape party preferences in Turkey by estimating an individual vote intention function that includes both economic and non‐economic factors. The economic variables can be used to test the familiar hypotheses of economic voting theory – whether individuals vote retrospectively and/or prospectively, and whether they are sociotropic and/or egotropic. The non‐economic factors include sociodemographic characteristics as well as identity and issue variables likely to be good predictors of party choice. The analysis focuses on comparing the characteristics of those who intend to vote for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) with those of other parties. According to multinomial logit estimates, young people, especially males, constitute the electoral base for the AKP. Those who have been affected adversely by recent economic developments, as well as those who are against Turkey's accession to the European Union are also more likely to vote for the AKP. The empirical work also provides evidence in support of economic voting hypotheses.

Egocentric economic voting and changes in party choice: Great Britain 1992–2001

Theories of economic voting argue that people who are feeling well off and who are optimistic about the future are likely to vote for the incumbent government’s return to power, whereas those suffering financially and pessimistic about the future are not. Many British cross‐sectional analyses of voting patterns have produced results consistent with this argument. Those findings have been challenged, however, on the grounds that the economic evaluations cannot be considered exogenous: economic evaluations at one election may be conditioned by party choice at a previous election. This argument is tested using panel survey data on egocentric economic evaluations and party choice for two electoral cycles in Great Britain (1992–97 and 1997–2001) and found valid. These data provide virtually no evidence to sustain the economic voting theory and instead support the endogeneity case.

Voter Profiles and Fragmentation in the Turkish Party System

Based on the multinomial logit estimates of an individual vote intention function, we perform restriction tests to make pairwise comparisons of the voter profiles of the major political parties in Turkey. The economic variables in the model are items that represent the well known hypotheses of economic voting theory, i.e. whether individuals vote retrospectively and/or prospectively, and whether they are sociotropic and/or pocketbook. The non-economic factors include socio-demographic characteristics as well as issues and identity variables that are likely to be good predictors of the party choice. In many cases, restriction tests provide evidence refuting the general view that the Turkish party system is artificially fragmented.

Attentes économiques et linguistiques et appui à la souveraineté du Québec: une analyse prospective et comparative

AbstractWhy are Quebeckers favourably disposed or opposed to sovereignty? This choice partly depends upon the prospective evaluation of the costs and benefits of sovereignty and federalism. What are the relative contributions of economic and linguistic expectations in this choice? Does the impact of these expectations vary according to the time horizon in which they are set? The authors approach these questions from the perspective of the economic theory of voting and with the help of original measures of the determinants of support for sovereignty. They compare expectations of what would occur to the economy and to the French language were Quebec to become a sovereign country with expectations of what would occur if Quebec remained a province of Canada. These measures are taken from a survey of university students. Our logistic regression analysis shows that the implicit calculation of costs and benefits plays a significant role in the choice between sovereignty and federalism, and that economic expectations influence the formation of opinion to a somewhat greater degree than do linguistic expectations. Moreover, medium-term expectations are more important than short-term economic expectations and more important than long-term expectations about the situation of the French language in Quebec.

The Political Economy of Competitive Elections in the Developing World

Theory: Theories of economic voting are applied to competitive elections in the developing world. Hypotheses: The effect of the macroeconomy on electoral support for incumbent parties is mitigated by the impact of the economy on turnout and the relative sensitivity of voters to recession and growth. Method: Pooled time series data on aggregate electoral data for eight developing countries are analyzed using least squares with dummy variables (LSDV). Results: Economic decline imposes enormous electoral costs on governments, but economic growth provides no electoral benefits.

People, Place and the Economic Theory of Voting: The 1992 British General Election

Much recent research on voting patterns in Great Britain has shown that economic concerns strongly influence many electors: those who are optimistic about their own and the country's future are more likely to support the incumbent government than are pessimists. The last two decades have also seen greater spatial polarisation of the British electorate, with Labour becoming relatively stronger in the north and Conservatives in the south. This paper provides the first direct evidence from survey data linking spatial polarisation to electors' evaluation of trends in regional economies. Voters who felt that their own and their region's economic situation had been in relative decline were less likely to vote Conservative in 1992, especially if they blamed government policy for those conditions.

Economic voting in South Korea: The 1988 assembly elections

The 1988 Assembly elections in South Korea provide an opportunity to explore whether voting based on short-term economic fluctuations was a feature of the elections. The research design regresses party votes from a large sample of the 224 electoral districts against several well-known determinants of Korean voting behavior (regionalism, urban-rural residence, and social class), as well as district unemployment rates and levels and changes in income. With traditional explanations of voting behavior held constant, income variables had no apparent influence on the vote. However, the coefficients for unemployment rates are large, statistically significant, and in a direction entirely consistent with the theory of rational economic voting. There are grounds for including short-term economic variables in future modeling of Korean electoral behavior.

Economic Conditions and Constituency Voting in Great Britain

The extent to which levels and trends in local unemployment and income influenced the Conservative vote in 633 separate British constituency elections in 1983 is estimated in several regression models. Long-term influences on voting are controlled by the endogenous variables of social class and territoriality. It is argued that this research design is superior to previous ones that have treated general elections as national elections in exploring the economic theory of voting. Sensitivity analysis (the use of several models to illuminate the research problem posed) suggests that, unlike America congressional elections, current rates and trends in local unemployment and income exerted a substantial and systematic influence on constituency voting.

Economic Influences on Elections to the U. S. Congress

This article examines economic voting at the congressional district level. Analysis of over 600 congressional races in the years 1976, 1978, and 1980 provides little evidence that economic conditions in the district affect the congressional vote. Using a contextual model, measures of the economic attitudes of individuals based on the 1978 National Election Study, combined with measures of district economic conditions, produce a statistically significant discriminant function for Republican party identifiers. However, the model's ability to discriminate between those voting Democratic and those voting Republican (according to the theory of economic voting) was only slightly better than results that would have been obtained by random classification. Given this evidence, serious doubts must be raised about the widely held belief that the 435 individual congressional elections serve collectively as a national referendum on the government's management of the economy.

The voting behavior of bureaucrats: Some empirical evidence

This paper has examined the voting behavior of bureaucrats and the consequences for elections. The economic theory of the rational voter predicts that bureaucrats would have more to gain by voting than the general public. The cost of voting is lower for public employees than for those who work in the private sector. As a consequence, theory predicts that bureaucrats would participate in elections at a greater rate than other individuals. As a test of the validity of the economic theory of voting, an empirical analysis of national elections from 1964 to 1978 was presented. The evidence is drawn from household survey data published by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The data permit a direct observation of voting participation rates of public and private employees. The empirical results indicate that bureaucrats consistently participate in elections at significantly greater rates than non-bureaucrats. As the public sector expands and voter participation rates remain low, bureaucrats will exert disproportionate influence on election outcomes.

Legislative profits and the economic theory of representative voting: An empirical investigation

The statistical findings of this study support the economic theory of representative voting. In general, producer and consumer groups influence representative voting behavior as expected. The findings suggest that legislators act “rationally” when confronted by competing lobbying groups. The consistently positive and highly significant influence of MSB share which serves to measure MSB influencerelative to the other bank groups indicates that legislators appear to consider opportunity costs in their decision-making calculus.