The Political Conditioning of Economic Perceptions

Abstract

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. We model the dynamic relationships between party support and retrospective economic perceptions-both sociotropic and egocentric-through the 1992-97 British electoral cycle. Our findings indicate that sociotropic perceptions are strongly conditioned by prior opinions of the incumbent Conservative Party and once this temporal relationship is taken into account, they have little affect on incumbent party popularity. Throughout the electoral cycle, lagged political support has a substantially stronger effect on sociotropic perceptions than the latter have on concurrent party support. Moreover, egocentric perceptions appear to be neither strongly affected nor influenced by party support. The findings of these dynamic individual-level analyses indicate that conventional wisdom is likely to considerably overstate the importance of retrospective economic considerations for political preferences.

Macroeconomics, economic crisis and electoral outcomes: A national European pool

“…In particular, he saw sociotropic retrospective items as error-laden, with respondents in the same survey exhibiting widespread disagreement over the condition of the national economy. Part of this error could come from partisan bias for or against the incumbent party (Evans and Andersen, 2006), and another part from general misinformation (Anderson, 2007: 280).…”

Rendición de cuentas en las democracias en desarrollo: El votante latinoamericano

“…Algunos académicos han argumentado que las percepciones individuales sobre el estado de la economía nacional podrían ser endógenas a la opción de voto (e.g., Wlezien et al, 1997;Anderson et al, 2004;Evans y Andersen, 2006). Esto es, que un individuo que apoya al candidato del partido de gobierno pueda tener una visión más optimista sobre las condiciones económicas recientes comparado a un individuo que apoya al candidato de la oposición.…”

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

“…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).…”

“…Partisanship and political ideology are certainly central to this line of argument (Enns and Anderson 2009;Evans and Andersen 2006;Evans 1999). Instead of relying on objective economic indicators, voters view the economy through the prism of partisan lens and assign credit and blame accordingly.…”

“…Instead of relying on objective economic indicators, voters view the economy through the prism of partisan lens and assign credit and blame accordingly. Also, since partisanship drives both economic evaluations and voter choice, the relationship between the latter two may be significantly overstated (Wlezien et al 1997;Johnston et al 2005;Evans and Andersen 2006;Anderson et al 2004;Enns et al 2008;Conover et al 1987). The most recent series of studies investigates how electoral expectations affect public economic forecasts and actual consumption behavior (Ladner and Wlezien 2007;Enns and Anderson 2009;Huber 2009, 2010).…”