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The Compleat Economic Voter: New Theory and British Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2012

Michael S. Lewis-Beck ,
Richard Nadeau  and
Martial Foucault
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Abstract

Almost all the prolific work done on economic voting has been based on the classic reward–punishment model, which treats the economy as a valence issue. The economy is a valence issue, but it is much more than that. This article explores two other dimensions of economic voting – position and patrimony. Investigating a 2010 British survey containing relevant measures on these three dimensions, the authors estimate their impact on vote intention, using 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 new result confirms and extends recent work on American and French elections.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 241 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

Lewis-Beck – Department of Political Science, University of Iowa (email: [email protected]; Nadeau and Foucault – Department of Political Science, Université de Montréal. This article was first presented at the Annual Conference of the American Political Science Association, Seattle, 2011. An appendix can be found on the Journal's website at http://www.journals.cambridge.org/jps.

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73 Other possible priorities to select were inflation, trade or growth; a reverse coding is used to get a positive sign for the Tory model.

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