Voting Behavior In National Presidential Elections: A State-Level Approach

Abstract

There are a number of studies that look at the relationship between economic factors and national elections.  The majority of the work in this area has been explored within the context of the so-called political business cycles (PBC) literature.  More recently focus has shifted to voting behavior studies that try to establish a functional relationship between economic factors and votes for the incumbents at national, parliamentary and other elections.  A number of studies in the United States have concentrated on the link between national economic indicators, such as unemployment and inflation and votes for the incumbent in presidential elections.  In this paper, we look instead at the effects of state and local economic factors on Presidential elections between 1988 and 2000.  We use regression analysis in a series of models to examine the impact of gross state product, state unemployment, and regional inflation on the percentage vote for the incumbent party in national presidential elections between 1988 and 2000.  Results from our models indicate that state economic variables matter from time to time. Inflation seems to have an influence on voting behavior across the fifty states in the 1988 and 1992 presidential elections, while variation in unemployment across states seems to be particularly relevant in the 2000 presidential election.  However, past voting behavior and partisanship seem to be more influential than economic factors in all of the models we examine in this paper.

Political Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation of Industrialized Democracies and Developing Nations

Abstract

There have been a number of studies investigating the existence of Political Business Cycles (PBC) around the world.  While much of this work has concentrated on industrialized economies, empirical evidence from developing nations however is rather limited.  This paper looks for evidence of political business cycles in 23 industrialized nations and adds to the current literature by including a set of 15 developing nations. The four macroeconomic variables of inflation, unemployment, government spending and economic growth are looked at in each of the countries in the sample.  The empirical methodology includes looking at summary statistics that enable comparisons between election and non- election years in an attempt to observe cyclical activity in an electoral cycle.  Results from the analysis indicate strong PBC activity for five industrialized economies and two of the developing nations in the sample. Overall, fourteen of the developed and seven of the developing countries show some evidence of PBC type activity.  Unemployment and growth rate of GDP seem to be the most often manipulated economic variables in election years, while inflation seems to be less under the control of incumbent governments.