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.