Economic voting in Hungary, 1998–2008

This study investigates retrospective voting and issue voting, and their change over time in a transitioning country. Sociotropic, as well as egocentric economic evaluations, and policy issues of parties are expected to play an increasing role in party preferences of citizens over time. Data consist of 41 Hungarian cross-sectional surveys, between 1998 and 2008. Results of conditional logistic regression models reveal that voters reward incumbent parties when they see improvements in their personal or the national economic situation, and punish them if the economy deteriorates. Distance from a given party on the left–right scale also decreases the chance of voting for that party. Voting behavior is changing during transition. The evaluations of the national economy and personal situation have an increasing impact on party preferences over time. We found educational heterogeneity in the extent of economic voting.     

Economic voting in Britain, 1857–1914

Despite limited government control over the pre-1914 economy, opposition politicians were enthusiastic in blaming bad economic news on the incumbent. In a study of 458 by-elections between 1857 and 1914, we find that voters typically gave new governments a 'honeymoon' but thereafter held them responsible for high unemployment and high prices. Each 1% rise in the price level, on average, brought about a 0.21% swing against the government of the day, while each one-point rise in the percentage unemployed had double this effect. However, when we split the electorate into borough and county constituencies, economic voting appears to be confined to the former.     

Economic voting in Sweden 1985–2010

Despite the fact that Sweden has the world’s second longest time-series of national election Studies, the standard model of micro-level economic voting has only been occasionally applied in Sweden. This study presents a long-term perspective on economic voting in Sweden and analyzes to what extent economic perceptions influence governmental support in general elections in Sweden at the eight latest parliamentary elections, 1985--2010. To this end, this article makes use of the rolling two-wave panels of the Swedish national election studies and estimates the probability of voting for the government depending on economic perceptions, previous vote, ideology and a set of SES controls. The results show that Swedish voting behaviour is no exception to that of most western democracies; subjective economic evaluations of the Swedish economy systematically influence government support. If voters feel the economy is improving they are more likely to vote for the incumbent government than when they feel the economy is getting worse.     

Strategic voting in local elections: evidence from Portugal (1979–2013)

Do voters behave strategically in local elections? Does democratic experience influence voters’ capacity to behave strategically? Is there a relation between education and voters’ capacity to anticipate the mechanical effects of electoral statutes and adapt their behaviour accordingly? Using an original data set covering the complete democratic period, this paper studies strategic voting at the local level in Portugal. Using an ecological inference approach, we contribute to a vast body of literature on strategic voting by testing whether theories developed for national contexts travel to local contexts. Our findings suggest that (1) voters consistently defect to non-viable lists to support viable lists; (2) democratic experience helps voters to learn how to maximize their utility; and (3) education is important for voters’ ability to identify a strategic setting.     

PIGS or not? Economic voting in Southern Europe

Economic voting has been little studied in the nations of Southern Europe. Here we examine economic voting in the Southern European countries of Portugal, Italy, Spain, and Greece – the PIGS. Through the analysis of a large, ten European nation survey pool, we establish that economic voting exists in the PIGS, with a strength that significantly exceeds that in non-PIGS of Northern Europe. The explanation for such a difference, we suggest, lies in the generally less complex governing coalitions and the poorer economic performance that characterize these Southern European nations. This relatively greater strength of the economic vote in the PIGS implies their electorates will hold government tightly accountable for management of the ongoing economic crises they face.     

Government accountability and voting choice in Italy, 1990–2008

Between 1996 and 2008 Italy has experienced four government alternations in as many consecutive elections. It could be argued that after the dramatic party change that occurred in the early 90s the Italian system is in a state of constant flux and voters appear rather bewildered. This paper presents an opposite argument, showing that voters' choice reflects the greater importance of valence politics – performance, the economy – acting as a cue to voting behaviour, interacting with a long-term political predisposition. In turn, this promotes parties' responsiveness and accountability since the overall performance of a government – even of a coalition government – appears as a goal to be shared by all partners, under the threat of defeat for all. The analysis is carried out employing the Italian National Elections Studies series.     

Still blurry? Economic salience,position and voting for radical right parties in Western Europe

Do radical right parties present blurry economic stances, or have they clarified their positions while moving towards the economic left? This article questions the strategic behaviour of radical right parties in Western Europe. It shows that although radical right parties have increased their discussion of economic issues, and expert placements of this party family on the economic dimension have become more centrist over time, the uncertainty surrounding these placements continues to be higher for the radical right than any other party family in Europe. The article then moves on to examine to what extent voter-party congruence on redistribution, immigration and other issues of social lifestyle predict an individual's propensity to vote for the radical right compared to other parties. Although redistribution is the component of economic policy where the radical right seems to be centrist, the findings indicate that it remains party-voter congruence on immigration that drives support for radical right parties, while the congruence level for redistribution has an insignificant effect. The article concludes that while radical right parties seem to have included some clearly left-leaning economic proposals, which shifted the general expert views of these parties to the economic centre, their overall economic profiles remain as blurry as ever.     

Negative personalization and voting behavior in 14 parliamentary democracies, 1961–2018

Existing research has begun to tackle the electoral consequences of affective polarization through the lens of negative partisanship. However, not equal attention has been paid to voters’ polarized opinions toward political leaders and their impact on electoral behavior. This paper offers a comparative, longitudinal assessment of the relationship between negativity towards party leaders and vote choice in multi-party systems. We develop our negative personalization hypothesis and test it empirically on an original pooled dataset featuring 109 national election surveys from 14 Western European parliamentary democracies collected over the last six decades. Our findings confirm the existence of a robust relationship between negative party-leader evaluations and vote choice. Furthermore, the results demonstrate a sizable growth in the incidence of negative personalization across time, now of a magnitude that compares to that exerted by in-party-leader evaluations. This finding constitutes a central innovation adding to the personalization of politics literature.     

Economic evaluations vs. ideology: Diagnosing the sources of electoral change in Turkey, 2002–2011

Turkish elections reflect two competing influences. One concerns a long-term increasingly conservative ideological orientation; the other, more short-term pragmatic evaluations primarily on the economic policy front. This article uses three nationwide representative surveys from 2002, 2007 and 2011 to assess the relative merits of these competing hypotheses. The findings indicate that the critical election of 2002 is not shaped by economic performance evaluations but rather by indicators of ideology at large and left–right ideology in particular. The influence of ideology appears to rise from 2002 to 2007 and 2011. Economic performance evaluations increase in salience from 2002 to 2007 but seem to have somewhat lost their power for 2011. Implications of these findings for the Turkish party system and further research questions are discussed in the concluding section.     

Economic or cultural backlash? Rethinking outsiders’ voting behavior

Political economists show that outsiders (unemployed and temporary workers) support redistributive policies more than insiders (standard dependent workers) and infer outsiders' voting behavior from their desired degree of State intervention in the economy. However, it has been suggested that international interdependence is reshaping the political space along two dimensions: the traditional economic left-right scale, and an emerging cultural integration-demarcation dimension. How do outsiders behave in this two-dimensional political landscape? This research note answers this question by combining individual data from the latest five waves of the European Social Survey (2008–2016) with party positions provided by the Comparative Manifesto Project on 27 European countries. Integrating research based on party families with parties’ policy positions, results show that the economic State-market dimension is still more linked to outsiders’ voting behavior than the cultural integration-demarcation dimension.     

Ideological change and the economics of voting behavior in the US, 1920–2008

This paper tests the proposition that voters advance a more liberal agenda in prosperous times and turn more conservative in dire economic times. A reference-dependent utility model suggests that, with income growth, the relative demand for public goods increases and the median voter is more likely to vote Democrat. With slowing income growth, the median voter derives increased marginal utility from personal income—making taxation more painful—and is more likely to vote Republican. Ordinary and instrumented analyses of a new time series for the US median voter are encouraging of this income growth model. This work links voting behavior to economic business cycles and shows that ideological change is endogenous to income growth rates.     

Class voting in Western industrialized countries, 1945–1990: Systematizing and testing explanations

Abstract. Analyzing data obtained from the literature and our own calculations, significant differences were found among countries in their levels of class voting. The Scandinavian countries had the highest and Canada and the USA the lowest levels of class voting. Since the 1950s, there was a decline in almost all countries in the level of class voting. In this article, several hypotheses were deduced from a limited number of individual assumptions, each purporting to explain the differences among and declining trends within countries. Testing these hypotheses with multilevel techniques revealed that differences among countries can best be explained by their population's religious–ethnic–linguistic diversity, and by the union density within countries. The decline in most countries can best be explained by the rise in their standard of living. Furthermore, a rise in the percentage of union members, especially among the nonmanual classes, accelerated the decline in the level of class voting in some countries.     

Economic and elections in Spain (1982–2008): Cross-measures,cross-time

In other leading Western democracies, the effects of economic voting are well-established. However, for Spain, a strong scholarly current argues against economic voting in that nation. Unfortunately, these various studies are limited, because they are based on incomplete survey cross-sections, which use individual subjective measures of the economy. We employ a full survey pool (of eight elections, 1982–2008), to examine the effects of two national economic measures (one objective and one subjective). In a carefully specified, and estimated, general voting model, the impact of economic conditions, variously measured, reveals itself to be statistically and substantively significant. After all, national economic voting in Spain appears to operate much as it does elsewhere.     

Fighting for relevance: Economic intelligence and special operations executive in Spain, 1943–1945

This article examines the work of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Spain during the latter part of the Second World War. Unlike SOE's broad mandate to sow dissent and disarray in occupied countries, in Spain agents were forbidden from any involvement in direct action and sabotage. Diplomatic concerns, namely the maintenance of Spanish neutrality in the war, overrode all other strategic issues in Iberia. SOE agents and leaders in Madrid, therefore, attempted to create a different role for themselves. Drawing on files released in the Public Record Office in 1998, the article highlights SOE's limited success in the effort to establish for itself a part in the Allied strategic and diplomatic campaign against German wolfram smuggling. Success proved fleeting, however, and SOE's ultimate failure, in the face of hostility from the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), to prove its usefulness beyond the wolfram campaign, would lead to its withdrawal from Spain. The story of the SOE in Spain represents, on a small scale, the failure of the organization to find a niche in the British intelligence community after the Second World War.     

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.     

Economic Crisis and Levels of Political Participation in Europe (2002–2010): The Role of Resources and Grievances

This article examines the effect of the recent economic crisis on political participation levels in Europe. As the civic voluntarism model and grievances theory predict different effects of economic downturn on political participation, the crisis provides a unique context to evaluate the explanatory power of these two theories. It is found that, when investigating a period of eight years (2002–2010), economic growth is positively associated with non-institutionalised political participation, which is in line with the civic voluntarism model. However, when focusing on the changes in political participation that occurred between 2008 and 2010 it is found that rising unemployment is associated with rising levels of non-institutionalised political participation, suggesting that grievance theory is especially useful in exceptionally negative conditions as suddenly imposed grievances can lead to various forms of protest behaviour. The article argues that these shock experiences can lead to momentary peak periods of mobilisation.     

Holding governments accountable? Individual heterogeneity in performance voting

This study suggests that performance voting is characterised by extensive individual heterogeneity. Most economic voting studies to date treat voters as rather homogeneous in their reactions to economic performance of incumbents. Yet, a large and well‐established line of research from the American context demonstrates the conditional impact of political sophistication and salience on voters' political attitudes and behaviour. Building on this work, this article explores individual‐level variation in performance voting due to political sophistication and salience. Utilising cross‐national data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) including 25 democracies, performance voting is examined across an array of policy areas including the economy, social welfare, immigration and national security, and it is shown that political sophistication and salience are key moderators of performance voting. The findings suggest that holding governments to account for past performance is mainly the prerogative of the highly sophisticated and thus may be more laborious than previously assumed. At the same time, the results indicate that the sophistication gap in performance voting narrows when voters attach a higher degree of salience to a policy area. As long as voters care enough about government activities in a particular policy area, incumbents can expect credit or blame for policy outcomes. This should provide at least some impetus for responsive policy making.     

Political-economic context and partisan strategies in the German federal elections, 1990–2002

This contribution develops a theory of the impact of differentiation on integration and unity among EU member states and discusses empirical evidence from four policy areas. According to the theory, the centripetal effects of closer co‐operation among willing EU members on initially unwilling non‐participants are strongly influenced by the character of the respective policy area in terms of public goods theory. The eventual participation of initially reluctant member states, which leads to the re‐establishment of long‐run unity despite short run differentiation, is most likely in policy areas involving excludable network effects, and most unlikely in areas dealing with common pool resource problems (the four remaining types of goods ranking in between these two extremes). The theoretical conclusions are supported by empirical evidence from four EU‐related policies: the successful three show strong characteristics of excludable network goods (EMU, Schengen and the Dublin Convention), while the one which has proved extraordinarily difficult so far involves a common pool resource problem (tax harmonisation).