POLI 1200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Spurious Relationship, Personal Finance, Bounded Rationality
22 May 2018
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Economic voting:
The relationship between economic concerns and voting behavior.
- Economic concerns are shaped in part by partisanship
- Approval of presidential handling of economy: conditioned on partisanship
Is the relationship between economic voting and voting for president a spurious relationship, where
partisanship is really the reason for the relationship?
-when you control for partisanship, republicans who are worried about the economy are less
likely to approve of Bush versus Republicans who are not worried about the economy
Empiral studies on the link between economy and voting behavior
First trial done: aggregate function
The presidential vote is a function of economics and politics.
-for economics, looked at macro level dat. Unemployment rate, GDP, inflation rates.
-for politics, aggregate level of Party ID
-harder to identify underlying function.
-for ecooic idex, the scholars could use differet thigs to easure this. It’s hard to pick this
one. Also question of ecological fallacy. Just because national economic condition is bad does not mean
everyone is.
Analysis of individual factors:
-pocketbook voting: personal finance: voting behavior
-asks person if they think they are individually better, worse or same
-sociotropic voting: national economy: voting behavior.
-peoples overall evaluation of national economic conditions. Asks if the nation is better,
worse off, or same.
Pocketbook voting:
Personal financial situation: if they thought it got worse, more likely to vote for Kerry than Bush
(72 vs 28). If better, more likely to vote for Bus (64 vs 36).
Sociotropic voting:for those who think US economy as a whole got worse, more likely to vote for Kerry
(80 vs 20). For those who thought US economy got better, more likely to vote for Bush (87 vs 13).
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
The relationship between economic concerns and voting behavior. Economic concerns are shaped in part by partisanship. Approval of presidential handling of economy: conditioned on partisanship. When you control for partisanship, republicans who are worried about the economy are less likely to approve of bush versus republicans who are not worried about the economy. Empiral studies on the link between economy and voting behavior. The presidential vote is a function of economics and politics. For eco(cid:374)o(cid:373)ic i(cid:374)dex, the scholars could use differe(cid:374)t thi(cid:374)gs to (cid:373)easure this. Just because national economic condition is bad does not mean everyone is. Asks person if they think they are individually better, worse or same. Asks if the nation is better, worse off, or same. Personal financial situation: if they thought it got worse, more likely to vote for kerry than bush (72 vs 28). If better, more likely to vote for bus (64 vs 36).
