Short-Term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896–1964

Abstract

This paper develops several simple multivariate statistical models and applies them to explain fluctuations in the aggregate vote for the United States House of Representatives, over the period 1896-1964. The basic hypothesis underlying these models is that voters are rational in at least the limited sense that their decisions as to whether to vote for an incumbent administration depend on whether its performance has been “satisfactory” according to some simple standard. Because of data limitations, the analysis focuses on measures of economic performance, treating other aspects of an incumbent's performance, such as its handling of foreign affairs, as stochastic perturbations of the underlying relationship to be estimated. (Examination of residuals suggests this assumption is not unreasonable, at least during peacetime.) Possible effects of coattails from presidential races, of incumbency, and of secular trends in the underlying partisanship of the electorate are also taken into account. The models, estimated by maximum-likelihood methods, are found to be successful. Close to two-thirds of the variance in the vote series is accounted for, and the structural coefficients of the models are of the correct signs and of quite reasonable magnitudes. Economic growth, as measured by the changes in real per capita income, is the major economic variable; unemployment or inflation have little independent effect. Presidential coattails are also found to be of some importance.

Social and economic determinants of Turkish voter choice in the 1995 parliamentary election

“…In fact, studies that use the growth rate in output or in per capita output during the election year as the main economic determinant of the incumbent government's electoral success, either finding or assuming growth in earlier years to be irrelevant, abound in the literature. Beside Fair (1978Fair ( , 1982Fair ( , 1988Fair ( , 1999Fair ( and 2004, these include time-series studies by Lewis-Beck and Rice (1984a), Burdekin (1988), Gleisner (1992), Chappell and Suzuki (1993), Rosenthal (1993, 1996), Alesina and Rosenthal (1995) and LewisBeck and Tien (1996) on U.S. presidential elections, by Kramer (1971), Lewis-Beck and Rice (1984b), Kiewiet and Udell (1998), and Grier and McGarrity (2002) on U.S. congressional elections, by Lewis-Beck (1997) on French presidential elections, Akarca and Tansel (2006) on Turkish parliamentary and local administration elections, cross-state time-series study by Peltzman (1987) on U.S. gubernatorial elections, cross-state study by Blackley and Shepard (1994) on a U.S. presidential election, election, pooled cross-national time-series studies by Powell and Whitten (1993) Peltzman (1990) analyzing U.S. presidential, senatorial and gubernatorial election outcomes, using pooled crossstate time-series data, and Abrams and Butkiewicz (1995) analyzing the outcome of a U.S. presidential election, using cross-state data, concluded that voters consider information from the incumbent's whole term, not just its final year. Their results nevertheless indicate that voters give relatively more weight to recent past of an administration than its distant past.…”

Transferências voluntárias e ciclo político-orçamentário no federalismo fiscal brasileiro

“…Desde então, diversos estudos econométricos ou teóricos tentam discernir essa relação entre crescimento e eleições. Merece destaque o estudo econométrico pioneiro Kramer (1971) que analisa o voto americano para a presidência e o Congresso de 1896 a 1964, concluindo que uma redução de 10% na renda pessoal per capita gera uma perda de aproximadamente 5% das cadeiras ocupadas pelo partido do presidente no Congresso. Além disso, o trabalho sugere que flutuações econômicas explicam aproximadamente 50% da variância do voto no Legislativo daquele país.…”

Joblessness and Perceptions about the Effectiveness of Democracy

“…For example, Kramer (1971), Stigler (1973), Fair (1978 analyzed the impact of economic conditions on the percentage of votes received by incumbent and opposition parties in the U.S. Presidential or Congressional elections. Markus (1988) and Nannestad and Paldam (1997) analyzed the propensity to vote for the incumbent as a function of personal economic circumstances and aggregate macroeconomic conditions in the U.S. and in Denmark, respectively.…”