Testing Partisan Effects on Economic Perceptions: A Panel Design Approach (original) (raw)
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Partisan Bias, Economic Perception, and the Campaign
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There is one clear exception to this statement, given certain theoretical and empirical assumptions: when partisan bias in perception of candidates' policy positions reflects "partisan stereotyping" (Rahn 1993). However, such stereotyping is only compatible with democratic precepts under two, rather strict, conditions: partisan labels are reliable indicators of candidates' policy positions, and voters actually know what policy positions go with what partisan label.
The meaning and use of subjective perceptions in studies of economic voting
Electoral Studies, 2013
In this essay, we discuss the usefulness and meaning of empirical models of economic voting that rely on measures of individual economic perceptions. The effort is motivated by the recent reappearance of a long-standing critique of the use of economic perceptions data in individual level economic voting studies, with a consequent call for the use of aggregate data, which suggests that variation in perceptions must reflect noise or error because there can be only one "real" state of the national economy applicable to all respondents in any national survey. We show, however, that this critique (and its corresponding prescriptions for how to specify empirical models of economic voting) is based on a misunderstanding about (1) the theoretical concepts called for by the leading theories of economic voting (and that we should be trying to measure), (2) the nature of the economy that individuals can actually observe (it is a distribution of possible states, not a point) and, consequently, (3) the interpretation of correlations between individual economic perceptions and electoral support.
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Existing research is replete with evidence that individuals’ perceptions of the state of the economy are seemingly only loosely connected to more objective evaluations of its state and are contaminated by partisan influences. This paper provides further evidence of why these partisan influences come about, by advancing the hypothesis that citizen political knowledge moderates the effect of partisanship on economic evaluations, grounded in Zaller’s Receive-Accept-Sample model of opinion formation and articulation. The paper also advances the hypothesis that more knowledgeable partisans will respond to changes in elite messaging regarding the economy fairly rapidly after a change in control of the government. I examine these propositions using data from the ANES panel study of public opinion between January 2008 and June 2010, and find evidence affirming the essential interactive role of knowledge and partisanship in the formation and articulation of evaluations of the national economy.
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Economic explanations of short-term electoral change have become pre-eminent in recent decades. These explanations, though often tested at the aggregate level, make assumptions about individual-level processes and the exogeneity of economic perceptions. Using the 1992-97 British Election Panel Study, this paper tests the microfoundations of economic theories of voting and party popularity in the British context.
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Economic theories of voting argue that party popularity and vote are heavily influenced by the performance of the economy. Inferences about the direction of causality between perceptions of the economy and party support remain questionable, however. This article evaluates the microfoundations of economic theories of voting and party popularity using multiwave panel data.
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What are the electoral impacts of perceptions of unemployment under different partisan persuasions of the government? Neither the literature on retrospective economic voting nor partisan voting has provided a compelling answer to this question. This paper addresses this puzzle by analyzing panel surveys and leveraging differences in government partisanship in two consecutive elections. I argue that negative evaluations of the employment situation induce voter transition to support a left-wing party under a right-wing government, but that such voter perceptions do not affect vote choice under a left-wing government. An analysis of a voter transition, using British Election Panel Study 1992–1997 and 1997–2001, reveals findings that support my argument. My argument suggests conditional partisan voting effects. Essentially, the effect of economic issues on vote choice is conditional on issue salience and which party “owns” the issue, namely, the varying levels of issue salience related ...
Employment, Party Economic Performance, and the Formation of Partisan Preferences
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In order to explore the formation of partisan preferences, this paper develops a political-economic model of the US providing micro-foundations for both the genesis and consequences of unemployment. It predicts the standard findings (1) that Democratic administrations are associated with higher economic growth than are Republican administrations; and (2) that the electorate's partisan preference is influenced by the relative likelihood of unemployment. These two patterns and the link between them are explained in terms of the decisions of rational agents facing uncertain elections and competitive labor markets. Specifically, differences in the parties' fiscal policies affect individuals' employment decisions. Agents use labor contracts to exploit the resulting economic uncertainty. The partisan preferences of the electorate are then influenced by employment status. This explanation avoids certain limitations in the work of Hibbs and Alesina.
Looking to the future: Prospective economic voting in 2008 Presidential Elections
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Despite the economic turmoil of the time, a typical study of vote choice in the 2008 US Presidential Election would (falsely) find little evidence that voters' opinions about the future state of the economy affected their vote choice. We argue that this misleading conclusion results from serious measurement error in the standard prospective economic evaluations survey question. Relying instead on a revised question, included for the first time in the 2008 American National Election Study, we find that most respondents condition their prospective economic evaluations on potential election outcomes, and that these evaluations are an important determinant of vote choice. A replication in a very different political contextthe 2008 Ghanaian electionyields similar results.