The effect of economic events on votes for president: 1992 update

This article updates through the 1992 election the equation originally presented in Fair (1978) explaining votes for president. Conditional predictions of the 1996 election are also made.     

Cross-pressured economic voting in America: The 1984 election

Prior work on U.S. presidential elections has concluded consistently that voter evaluations of national economic conditions have had a greater impact on electoral outcomes than have perceptions of personal economic situations. Utilizing data from the 1984 National Election Study, we find confirmatory evidence for such a pattern. A more disaggreated examination of voters and their economic perceptions for that year, however, reveals some important refinements of earlier findings. Specifically, there is a sizable minority for whom personal economic conditions appear to matter more. Further, the role of noneconomic issue voting in distinguishing economic groups, a topic which has been largely ignored up to this point, is found to be quite pronounced — overriding, in several instances, the influence even of partisan and economic predispositions.     

The petit effect of campaign spending on votes: using political financing reforms to measure spending impacts in multiparty elections

Public Choice - This paper explores the relation between campaign spending and votes, in France, relying on political financing reforms as a quasi-natural experiment to assess if and how spending...     

Revealed preference for economics journals: Citations as dollar votes

Public Choice - There are several measures which can be used to evaluate professional regard for economics journals. In this paper, I have focused on citations as a proxy for quality of material...     

How parties compete for votes: A test of saliency theory

Saliency theory is among the most influential accounts of party competition, not least in providing the theoretical framework for the Comparative Manifesto Project – one of the most widely used data collections in comparative politics. Despite its prominence, not all empirical implications of the saliency theory of party competition have yet been systematically tested. This article addresses five predictions of saliency theory, the central claim of which is that parties compete by selective issue emphasis rather than by direct confrontation. Since a fair test of the theory's assumptions needs to rely on data that measures party issue saliency and party positions independently, this article draws on new manifesto data from the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES). Analysing all manifestos issued for the 2002, 2006 and 2008 general elections, it shows that saliency theory correctly identifies some features of party competition. For instance, parties disproportionally emphasise issues they ‘own’. Yet, the core assumption of saliency theory that parties compete via selective issue emphasis rather than direct confrontation over the same issues fails to materialise in the majority of cases.     

Forgetting to make votes count: The role of previous democratic experience

This paper argues that wasted votes in founding elections decrease when countries have a previous democratic experience before the current democratic period. This historical-institutionalist argument is tested with national election results in 22 founding elections in third-wave European, Asian, Latin American and African democracies. The results demonstrate that having a democratic past clearly increases coordination and then reduces the percentage of wasted votes in the founding election, controlling for the electoral system.     

The politics of beer: analysis of the congressional votes on the beer bill of 1933

Nine days after he took office in March 1933, Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress to amend existing federal Prohibition policy so as to allow for the sale and consumption of 3.2% alcohol beer. Over the following 8 days, the so-called “beer bill” was proposed, debated, passed and signed into law. This study analyzes the political decision making behind one of FDR’s earliest New Deal policies. Specifically, we consider how voter preferences, representatives’ ideologies, national party affiliations, and the influence of special interests affected legislative decision making. We find that special interests and party affiliations were particularly important drivers of congressional voting behavior.     

Party incumbency and economic growth in the United States: 1929 to 1984

This paper investigates the relationship between Democratic presidential incumbency and economic growth in the United States in the long run. The analysis shows the Democrats have stimulated growth beyond trends when two conditions are met: first, when an incoming administration is formally committed to promoting growth and employment, and second, when that administration has at least two terms of office to implement those goals. The transmission mechanisms linking incumbency and growth are explored by means of a standard Keynesian IS-LM model, which is augmented by additional relevant variables. The transmissions process works via monetary policy, fiscal policy, and welfare expenditure. It also seems likely that changing expectations of consumers and investors stimulated the economy beyond trends for some Democratic administrations.     

The effect of relative economic performance on the outcome of gubernational elections

This study finds that one of the most important determinants of election outcomes in gubernatorial elections is the voter's familiarity with the candidates. When an incumbent governor seeks re-election, his party's share of the vote increases by about 7.3 percentage points, ceteris paribus. Likewise, when a former candidate represents the opposition party, the incumbent party's share of the vote decreases by about three percentage points, ceteris paribus. The electoral history of the state also has a significant effect on the share of the vote received by the incumbent party.The major finding of this study is that state economic conditions exert only a weak influence on the outcome of gubernatorial elections. Assuming that voters are rational, a major implication of this finding is that voters do not view a governor as being able to substantially influence a state's economy. If, during a gubernatorial campaign, voters view the candidates as having little or no control over the state economy they will evaluate candidates on the basis of non-economic positions.     

Research Note: On the inverse relationship between votes and proximity for niche parties

Abstract.  Do niche parties occupying left-right policy positions that diverge sharply from the centre of the voter distribution gain more popular support than those moderately positioned along the left-right continuum? Cross-sectional analyses, based on observations from twelve Western European countries from 1984–1998, are presented that suggest the answer is 'yes'. By contrast, these analyses strongly suggest that for mainstream parties, policy radicalism depresses popular support. The implication of these findings is that for niche parties, it is the distinctiveness of their left-right positions that enhances their competitiveness in democratic elections. While this finding runs counter to the intuition of standard spatial theory, it is consistent with recent dynamic accounts of niche party responsiveness to shifts in public opinion and electoral support for niche parties. These findings have implications for party strategies, spatial theories and the understanding of political representation.     

Popular initiatives in Uruguay: confidence votes on government or political loyalties?

Among stable democracies, Uruguay is one of the most prodigious users of direct democratic devices at the national level. If we analyze the relationship between the share of “yes” votes received by any popular initiative and the share of votes received by politicians who politically supported it, we observe a strikingly high positive correlation of 0.9. Explaining this correlation is the central objective of this paper. Three alternative hypotheses are plausible: First, such a correlation could be a spurious association due to aggregation bias. Second, PI results could be reflections of economic conditions. Third, Uruguayans are extremely consistent in following their political parties' advice. This paper finds that when Uruguayans go to the polls to vote on a popular initiative, their vote choice is primarily the result of their party loyalty, rather than their reaction to economic conditions. In testing my hypotheses I rely on the following statistical methods: King's “Ecological Inference,” multivariate regression, and path analysis. The data come from seven popular initiatives in Uruguay since 1985 (133 observations).     

Nonexpert beliefs about the macroeconomic consequences of economic and noneconomic events

Economists assume that individuals think about the economy like economists, which is especially important in all rational expectations and economic voting models. Despite contrasting evidence, there has been little research on actual nonexpert macroeconomic beliefs. In this paper, I present the results of a survey among students designed to find out whether they distinguish macroeconomically relevant from irrelevant events. I find that even people with some economic background tend to overestimate the effects of noneconomic events. This bias is a function of gender, economic training, and the preferred means of mass communication.     

The tragedy of the political commons: Evidence from U.S. Senate roll call votes on environmental legislation

When the costs of regulation are borne by individuals outside of their political jurisdiction, an elected politician arguably will vote in favor of socially costly regulations because from his/her narrow perspective even small marginal benefits outweigh zero marginal costs. Our empirical analysis of the environmental voting records of U.S. Senators from 1991 to 2002 reveals a pronounced tendency for Senators to vote against (in favor of) environmental bills that impose costs in their (other) states. The straightforward implication is that elected politicians overgraze the regulatory pasture.     

The voter as juror: Attributing responsibility for economic conditions

One assumption of Key's reward-punishment theory that has attracted comparatively little attention is that voters hold the incumbent party responsible for all manner of economic fluctuations. A brief review of the survey literature in economic voting indicates that this assumption is in need of revision. The handful of existing studies in political science on responsibility attribution suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity and a failure to develop a theory of the attribution process. This paper outlines a model of economic voting in which people act as intuitive jurors using various decision rules to evaluate the evidence surrounding the president's responsibility for national economic problems. The generalizability of the framework and directions for future research are discussed