Collective and individual economic judgments and voting in West Germany, 1961–1984

Abstract: : This article attempts to provide individual-level support to findings of longitudinal macro-level studies of the relation between economic variables and electoral outcomes in the Federal Republic. The theoretical framework is one of incumbency-oriented vs. policy-oriented political responses to collective vs. individual economic judgments (Kiewiet, 1983). The data base consists of 25 surveys from 1961 through 1984. Empirical analysis comprises three steps: First, the relation between economic judgments and partisan sympathies is analyzed, since it appears likely that part of the covariations between voting and such judgments is spurious due to a common dependence upon partisan orientations. Second, the impact of both kinds of economic judgments upon voting over time is investigated with and without controls for partisan affiliation. Finally, the impact over time of macropolitical and macroeconomic variables on individual political response patterns to economic judgments is estimated at the longitudinal macro-level. The analysis demonstrates that collective economic judgments are generally a more potent predictor of electoral choice than individual economic judgments, and that there is clear empirical evidence both for the incumbency-oriented and the policy-oriented hypothesis linking such judgments to the vote.