Journal ArticleDOI
The Effect of Aggregate Economic Variables on Congressional Elections
TLDR
This paper used rational voting behavior as an organizing device to develop a framework within which to consider the effect of economic aggregates on voters and found that the effect on the participation rate is much clearer than the effects on either party.Abstract:
This paper uses rational voting behavior as an organizing device to develop a framework within which to consider the effect of economic aggregates on voters. Unlike most previous studies, ours permits the voter to vote for candidates of either party or to abstain. A principal finding is that the effect of the main economic aggregates on the participation rate is much clearer than the effects on either party. Our results deny that an incumbent administration can affect the control of Congress by stimulating the economy. Voters appear to make judgments about inflation, unemployment and economic growth. We investigated on the basis of long-term, not short-term performance.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Economic Determinants of Electoral Outcomes
TL;DR: The authors found that voters hold the government responsible for economic performance, rewarding or punishing it at the ballot box, regardless of the democracy they vote in, and that good times keep parties in office, bad times cast them out.
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Economic Discontent and Political Behavior: The Role of Personal Grievances and Collective Economic Judgments in Congressional Voting
TL;DR: For example, this article found that those voters unhappy with changes in their financial circumstances, or those who had recently been personally affected by unemployment, showed little inclination to punish candidates of the incumbent party for their personal misfortunes.
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The effect of economic events on votes for president
TL;DR: This paper present a model of voting behavior that is general enough to incorporate what appear to be most of the theories of voting behaviour in the recent literature and that allows one to test their model against another.
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The Ecological Fallacy Revisited: Aggregate-Versus-Individual-Level Findings on Economics and Elections, and Sociotropic Voting
TL;DR: This paper argued that the discrepancies between the macro-and micro level studies are a statistical artifact, arising from the fact that observable changes in individual welfare actually consist of two unobservable components, a government-induced (and politically relevant) component, and an exogenous component caused by life-cycle and other politically irrelevant factors.
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Economic Retrospective Voting in American National Elections: A Micro-Analysis*
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used data from the 1956 to 1974 SRC election studies to uncover an individual-level basis for the macro-relationship found by earlier studies, finding no system-atic relationship between a citizen's personal economic condition and his decision to vote or abstain.
References
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Book
An Economic Theory of Democracy
TL;DR: Downs presents a rational calculus of voting that has inspired much of the later work on voting and turnout as discussed by the authors, particularly significant was his conclusion that a rational voter should almost never bother to vote.
Journal ArticleDOI
An Efficient Method of Estimating Seemingly Unrelated Regressions and Tests for Aggregation Bias
TL;DR: In this paper, a method of estimating the parameters of a set of regression equations is reported which involves application of Aitken's generalized least-squares to the whole system of equations.
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The American Voter
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The calculus of consent : logical foundations of constitutional democracy
James M. Buchanan,Gordon Tullock +1 more
TL;DR: The Calculus of Consents as mentioned in this paper analyzes the calculus of the rational individual when faced with questions of constitutional choice and examines the (choice) process extensively only with reference to the problem of decision-making rules.
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A Theory of the Calculus of Voting
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reinterpret the voting calculus so that it can fit comfortably into a rationalistic theory of political behavior and present empirical evidence that citizens actually behave as if they employed this calculus.