Economic voting in the Philippines

Abstract

The article wanted to find out if elections in the Philippines are economically motivated. Using 2019 gubernatorial election results, a logit model with inflation rate, unemployment rate, provincial revenue, and poverty incidence for the economic variables and party affiliation with the President and membership in a political family as the political variables was tested to explain the probability of an incumbent governor to be re-elected. The marginal effects tell us that a change in the unemployment rate decreases the predicted probability of a governor being reelected but interestingly, a change in the poverty incidence rates has the opposite effect.