Economic Voting in Danish Electoral Surveys 1987‐94

Abstract

Economic issue effects (“sociotropic” effects) are found to eclipse “pocketbook” effects on the vote for shifting Danish governments in cross‐section surveys of the general elections of 1987. 1990 and 1994. Voter stands on the economic issue, Denmark's economic conditions, are in turn affected by left‐right orientation and by images of the competing governments as managers of the economy and in the aggregate differ markedly from real economic growth.

Cross-National Yardstick Comparisons: A Choice Experiment on a Forgotten Voter Heuristic

“…Economic voting research often assumes that voters hold the government accountable for the economy. Today much research point to the that the national economy dominate personal finances motives, i.e., sociotropic motives are stronger than egotropic motives (Lewis-Beck and Paldam 2000; Stubager et al 2013;Singer and Carlin 2013;Borre 1997). Nonetheless, from a rational economic approach, voters should be egotropically motivated because they maximize their utility through personal finances.…”

“…Economic voting theory assumes that voters maximize their utility. This theory attempts to explain political choices based on voters' assessments of the national economy and their own personal economic situation (Alvarez et al 2000;Borre 1997;Dorussen and Palmer 2002;van der Eijk et al 2006). In this sense, economic voting highlights that politics is about tradeoffs between various alternatives.…”

Critical Issues and Political Alienation in Denmark

“…The e¡ect of the three economic items will be compared by means of a regression analysis, but other controls should be inserted as well. First, the e¡ect of economic evaluations may be spurious because such evaluations are much more positive among government supporters than among opposition voters; this is true even for the personal economy (Borre 1997). We therefore need to control for the incumbencyô pposition factor.…”

“…Second, it may be suspected that economic deprivation or grievances may underlie part of the e¡ects of the EU issue and the immigration issue that we have already looked at. Shifting the blame for economic misfortune away from private and domestic factors and towards various kinds of foreign in£uence is not an uncommon psychological Personal and National Economy, 1987, 1994, and 1998198719941998 Personal Note: Personal economy is based on the 1987 item,`Are you and your family better o¡ now than two or three years ago, worse o¡ than two or three years ago, or is it the same? ', the 1994 item,`How is the economic situation of your family today compared to a year ago?…”

The Formation of Economic Perceptions in Post-Communist Countries of East Central Europe

“…Without the former, scholars face the unpleasant endogeneity dilemma. Empirical studies, however, have been consistently pointing to the fact that democratic publics are less sophisticated than expected by democratic theorists, and their economic assessments often deviate from macro-economic realities (Borre 1997;Evans 1999). Most importantly, a number of recent works--a revisionist trend in the economic voting literature--have demonstrated that these deviations are systematic, rather than random, in nature (Anderson 2007;Wlezien et al 1997;Anderson et al 2004;Johnston et al 2005;Enns and Anderson 2009;Evans and Andersen 2006;Evans 1999).…”