Ideology and interests in congressional voting: The politics of abortion in the U.S. Senate

Many studies suggest that personal ideology accounts for much more of congressional voting behavior than does attention to the desires of the electorate. There are two main explanations given for this seemingly robust conclusion: 1) poor measures of constituency preferences compared to those for ideology or behavior, and 2) representatives “shirk” on an inattentive electorate. We argue that existing studies have been biased against the “interest” explanation by ignoring the structure of American Congressional elections, in particular the party primary process. Correcting for the party primary effect, we show, within the context of abortion politics, that constituency interests possess greater explanatory power than previous models would suggest.     

Economic concerns in Italian electoral behavior: Toward a rational electorate?

The current paradigm in the study of Italian electoral behavior finds in the ideological attachment and identification with political parties the basic determinants of voting. The relationship between economic conditions and electoral outcomes has not been the object of intense study, since it was assumed that the very predominance of the ideological dimension made any consideration of economic concerns among the electorate irrelevant. Recent research, employing both aggregate and survey data, shows, however, that economic conditions seem to exert an impact on electoral outcomes. Moreover, the emergence of a more rational and secular electorate might further increase the importance of economic voting.     

Perceptions of economic performance and voting behavior in the 1983 general election in Britain

The evaluation of voters' perceptions of economic performance and their relationships to voting behavior has been a relatively neglected topic in British politics. A model of these relationships is specified and estimated using data from a survey of the electorate carried out at the time of the general election of 1983. The model demonstrates strong underlying links between partisanship, perceptions of economic performance, and salient noneconomic issues during the election. The latent construct underlying these variables is a highly significant predictor of the probability of voting Conservative in that election. By contrast, perceptions of personal economic conditions are not a significant predictor of voting behavior at all. Overall, these results show that perceptions of national economic performance played a highly significant role in determining the outcome of the election in 1983.     

Interrogating the Political Economy of Age

This article considers the argument by Tim Vlandas, in this issue, that an ageing electorate may undermine democracies’ ability to make the right economic choices. Vlandas suggests that the emergence of gerontocratic politics may give rise to ‘gerontonomia’: an economy run for the old, at the expense of younger generations and of future prosperity. However, evidence from the UK suggests a more mixed picture. Age-based voting patterns have been consequential around single issues, not least the 2016 Brexit referendum. However, voters’ interests in broad economic policy models are not easily reducible to age dynamics, and intergenerational politics are filtered through a set of normative and affective considerations beyond straightforward self-interest. Moreover, since the rational interests of different age groups do not speak for themselves, cueing by political elites is potentially significant and may be contributing to older voters’ relative tolerance of a poor economic record.     

Confronting Political--Economic Theories of Voting with Evidence

This paper illustrates one strategy for testing a theory ofeconomic influences on voting. We use a competitive equilibriummodel of the economy to determine the impact of an individual'seconomic position on his or her economic interests and, ultimately,political interests. We then test whether this impact is observedin voting behavior, addressing the resulting specification andestimation problems in the context of U.S. presidential electiondata. Our empirical results suggest that, despite these formidableproblems, we can usefully connect political—economic modelsand discrete-choice (probit) models of voting.     

What’s in a poll? Incentives for truthful reporting in pre-election opinion surveys

We examine the ability of pre-election polls to aggregate information about voter preferences. We show that if the electorate is small and voting costs are negligible, then an equilibrium exists in which citizens report their true political preferences. If the electorate is large or voting costs are significant, however, then no such equilibrium exists because poll respondents possess incentives to influence the voting behavior of others by misreporting their true preferences. We find that when a truthful equilibrium does exist, a poll can raise expected welfare by discouraging turnout among members of the minority.     

On the (mis)measurement of legislator ideology and shirking

In this paper, we show that current statistical measures of legislator's shirking are implicitly based on the electoral concept of a unique majority rule equilibrium point in the policy space where elections are contested. We note that such equilibria do not exist generically and present statistical results showing that cross-sectional regressions where legislators' voting indices are predicted by district average demograhic and economic data are mis-specified. We also discuss a weaker equilibrium construct, the uncovered set, and present statistical evidence showing that differences in voting behavior between Senators from the same state are positively related to the heterogeneity of the electorate. We argue that current evidence alleged to show shirking by Senators is equally consistent with Senators who perfectly represent an idiosyncratic constituency that cannot be represented by district average data.     

Increased economic salience or blurring of responsibility? Economic voting during the Great Recession

There is a puzzle which emerged following the Eurozone crisis: whereas the salience of the economy suggests an increase in economic voting, the realization that economic policies have become Europeanised may blur the responsibility of national governments, thus decreasing economic perceptions' weight on electoral choices. Do these mechanisms exclude each other? Do they refer to different groups of the electorate? We first examine the longitudinal trends of economic voting from 2002 to 2015 in three bailed out countries, namely Ireland, Portugal and Spain, to see if the economy's salience during the Great Recession increased the relevance of the economic perceptions in these countries. Secondly, making use of a unique media dataset of the last 16 years we test whether exposure to major mainstream newspapers that focus on the EU mitigates economic voting. On average, economic voting increased following the crisis. However, individuals who are more informed about the EU tend to use economic voting to a lesser extent, given they are more aware of the national government's limited room for manoeuvre.     

Policy attitudes, ideology and voting behavior in the 2008 Election

This article examines the impact of policy attitudes and ideology on voting behavior in the 2010 U.S. presidential election. The analysis uses data from the 2008 American National Election Study. The empirical results indicate that the 2008 election should not be regarded as a simple referendum on the George W. Bush presidency. At the same time, voting behavior was not particularly aligned along stark policy divisions; the direct effects of issue attitudes were confined largely to the most sophisticated stratum of the electorate. Finally, liberal-conservative orientations did affect citizens' political attitudes and candidate choices in ways that are fairly unique, compared to other recent elections.     

The political business cycle under rational voting behavior

This essay argues that politically motivated business cycles could persist in a democratic society even if the electorate votes in a rational, fully informed manner, provided that government policymakers have the means to systematically generate macroeconomic fluctuations. This cyclic outcome reflects the pReferences of an electorate that is composed of imperfectly altruistic voters belonging to different overlapping generations. Since each generation has a different horizon over which it would like to have elected politicians provide an optimal economic policy plan, an intergenerational conflict of interests situation arises. This conflict is placed into an explicit political context, whereby cycles become generated under the institutional constraint of periodic elections.     

The impact of legal constraints on voter registration,turnout, and the composition of the American electorate

Research on the effects of restrictive voter registration laws has been largely passé for nearly a decade, apparently due to the widespread acceptance of Wolfinger and Rosenstone's (1980) study of voter turnout. Wolfinger and Rosenstone's research indicates that fully liberalized registration laws would produce a larger voting population, which would differ only marginally in its composition from the existing electorate. But their analysis only addresses turnout, not registration itself, and is based on a single sample of the American electorate, 1972. This paper focuses on the impact of restrictive laws on registration and turnout in presidential and nonpresidential election years during the period 1972–1982, relying on data from both the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Surveys and the National Election Studies. The results of the analyses do mark important points of difference from Wolfinger and Rosenstone's findings. Ultimately, however, there is no escaping their conclusion that the implications of liberalized voter registration laws on the composition of the electorate would be relatively minor.     

Finding Out the Hard Way: Uncovering the Structural Foundations of Political Dissatisfaction in Italy, 1973–2013

In economic voting models, the electorate punishes governments associated with bad economic results and rewards those who provide prosperity. However, citizens do not always place the same weight on economic considerations when deciding their vote. This weight, it is argued, is a function of the degree to which governments can be deemed responsible for domestic economic outcomes. More precisely, the article hypothesises that when the economy is highly vulnerable to external economic conditions (and thus less controllable by the national government), voters will value less the information they receive on the state of the economy, and, as a consequence, electoral behaviour will be less influenced by economic performance. This conjecture is tested empirically using survey data from 15 European countries. Consistently with the prediction, it is found that employment expectations matter more the greater the degree of economic closeness of the country. General economic expectations have an impact on voting regardless of the level of economic openness, and no sign of pocketbook voting is detected. Also, the evidence seems to suggest that the internationalisation of the economy plays an exonerating role only under left-wing governments.     

Election manifestos and policy-oriented economic voting

Abstract. Many previous analyses of aggregate-level policy-oriented economic voting hypotheses have been based on expert judgements of incumbents' ideology. These judgements first of all concentrate on long term characteristics of ideological stands and, more importantly, do not reflect parties' positions on economic issues per se. Using parties' arguments on economic issues in their election manifestoes, this article develops a left-right ideology dimension that reflects parties' relative positions on economic issues for 163 elections in 16 countries in the post-World War II period. The analysis suggests that over time there are very stable differences in parties' ideological positions on economic issues. Despite increasing clarity of ideological cleavages on economic issues, and persistent evidence of diverging economic policy outcomes in the literature, no distinct reward and punishment by the electorate is observed, associated with the ideological stands of the incumbents. Accordingly, the policy-oriented economic voting hypothesis is rejected and possible reasons for this phenomenon is discussed.     

Endogenous economic voting: evidence from the 1997 British election

Using panel surveys conducted in Great Britain before and after the 1997 general election, we examine the relationship between voting behavior and post-election economic perceptions. Drawing on psychological theories of attitude formation, we argue that those who voted for Labour and the Liberal Democrats perceived the past state of the British economy under the Tory government more negatively than they had prior to casting their ballot in the 1997 election. Similarly, we posit that Labour supporters would view the future state of the national economy under Labour more positively than they had before the election. This indicates that, contrary to many assumptions in the economic voting literature, voting behavior influences evaluations of the economy as voters seek to reduce inconsistencies between their vote choice and evaluations of the economy by bringing their attitudes in line with the vote they cast in the election. It also means that voters’ post-election economic perceptions are, at least in part, influenced by and thus endogenous to their vote choice. This finding has two major implications: first, cross-sectional models of economic voting are likely to overestimate the effect of economic perceptions on the vote. Second, the endogeneity of economic perceptions may compromise the quality of economic voting as a mechanism for democratic accountability.     

Patience as the rational foundation of sociotropic voting

Economic voting is one of the most important mechanisms on explaining voting behavior and on establishing the democratic accountability. However, people tend to use perceived national economic condition on evaluating the incumbent, which is known as sociotropic voting, instead of their pocketbook. Previous studies suggest both altruism and self-interested future expectation may help explain this seemingly irrational behavior, but empirical works have not yet found convincing evidence to prove or disprove the self-interested motivation. This article suggests that patience makes people discount less on the potential future influence of the current national economic change; if self-interest drives sociotropic voting, patient voters would be more sociotropic. Consistent with the hypothesis, individual-level data from 2014 Comparative Congressional Election Survey shows that patient voters rely more on the perceived national economic change to evaluate the incumbent and make vote choice. Limited evidence of the linkage between impatience and pocketbook voting among non-partisans, and on the country-level is also provided.     

Dealignment, spatial polarisation and economic voting

Abstract. Estimates of voting by occupational class are provided for each of 22 regions in the UK for every general election since 1964. These are analysed, using a log-linear modelling strategy, to identify the changing degree of class dealignment and spatial polarisation within the British electorate over the period. The growing regional variability is consistent with expectations regarding the increasing volume of economic voting and the pattern of uneven development in the country: the north-south and urban-rural divides have both widened.     

The impact of compulsory voting on inequality and the quality of the vote

Abstract

Democratic elections imply that the electorate holds incumbents accountable for past performance, and that voters select the party that is closest to their own political preferences. Previous research shows that both elements require political sophistication. A number of countries throughout the world have a system of compulsory voting, and this legal obligation boosts levels of voter turnout. Under such rules, citizens with low levels of sophistication in particular are thought to turn out to vote in higher numbers. Is it the case that the quality of the vote is reduced when these less sophisticated voters are compelled to vote? This article investigates this claim by examining the effect of compulsory voting on accountability and proximity voting. The results show that compulsory voting reduces stratification based on knowledge and level of education, and proximity voting, but it does not have an effect on economic accountability. The article concludes with some suggestions on how systems of compulsory voting might mitigate the strength of political sophistication in determining the quality of the vote decision process.     

Sequential vote choice: Applying a consideration set model of heterogeneous decision processes

This article analyzes the relative effects of a classic set of long-term and short-term determinants of party choice by treating voters' decision processes as a two-stage heterogeneous process. Departing from a consideration set model of voting behavior (CSM), we use panel data collected in Sweden in 2014 to analyze which voters considered voting for more than one party. To evaluate the CSM approach we estimate the relative effects of long-term and short-term determinants, for different parts of the electorate and at different stages of the decision process.Results confirm that the choice process for the ‘considering kind’ of voters is influenced by another mix of long-term and short-determinants than stable and party identified voters. Findings suggest that continued analyses of multi-stage decision making may bring new insights into electoral behavior. We argue that the core ideas of CSM – the sequential decision-making process and heterogeneity in the impact of long-term and short-term determinants – are generally applicable for analyses of voting behavior.     

A two-step approach to assessing composition effects of the National Voter Registration Act

Using aggregate level data from 1996 and 1998 this paper employs a two-step strategy to explore the impact of implementing the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) on the education, income, age, and racial/ethnic composition of state electorates. The results of the project suggest that implementation of the reform had a moderate effect on reducing the tendency of state registered electorates to be skewed toward higher education, income, and age groups. The implementation of NVRA procedures was also associated with reductions in the tendency of the voting electorate to be skewed toward higher socioeconomic groups and older Americans. The impact was indirect, however, in that changes in the voting electorate were a result of changes in the registered population, which were, in part, due to the implementation of the reform.     

A dynamic test of the marginality hypothesis

The marginality hypothesis is an attempt to relate the voting margins of members of Congress to their subsequent legislative behavior. A major corollary of the hypothesis is that members of Congress with small victory margins will be more responsive to constituents than those with large victory margins. This has been assumed to mean that electorally secure representatives can afford to be more loyal to their congressional parties, since they have less cause to worry about their chances for reelection. Previous empirical studies have produced mixed results. We ask the question in a different way: Do changes in marginality affect party voting within Congress? If so, major shifts in the electorate potentially can have a fundamental impact on the behavior of Congress itself. We find that this is not true. Electoral margin is simply not related to party loyalty.