The Compleat Economic Voter: New Evidence from the UK
32 Pages Posted: 4 Aug 2011
Date Written: August 3, 2011
Abstract
While economic voting has been much studied, almost all the work has been based on the classic reward-punishment model, which treats the economy as a valence issue. The economic is, indeed, a valence issue, but it is much more than that. In the work at hand, we explore two other dimensions of economic voting – position and patrimony. Through investigation of a 2010 UK election survey containing relevant measures on these three dimensions, we estimate their impact on vote intention, in the context of a carefully specified system of equations. According to the evidence reported, each dimension of economic voting has its own independent effect. Moreover, together, they reveal a “compleat” economic voter, who wields considerable power over electoral choice in Britain. This result, while new, confirms and extends recent work on US and French elections.
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