In the US this was also a problem for the Republicans in taking control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Typically, midterm elections primarily bring out strong partisans. This limits economic voting compared to presidential elections. High incumbency rates within the House further downplayed the effectiveness of the economic vote. What occurred is that within the 2010 midterm election, turnout and enthusiasm levels were critical variables. Prior to the election, Gallup found a 22 percent gap between Republicans and Democrats in plans to vote.8 The economic-minded partisan model’s results suggest that the economic vote mobilized the opposition party and depressed voting among incumbent party supporters. A major difference between the American case and the British one is that in more competitive districts, these Democratic-leaning supporters did not have a realistic third choice, as Labour supporters had with choosing to vote for Liberal Democrat candidates. Therefore, in the US, it actually took effect in only a handful of the 435 districts in the House of Representatives (the 63 districts in the House that went to the Republicans). Chamber and constituency differences in the US Congress also dampened the impact of the economic vote.
The rise of the Tea Party in the US also contributed to the difficulty of voters in fully engaging in economic voting. It was an additional reason that the Republican Party failed to win control of the Senate,9 though this faction of voters within the Republican Party was successful in motivating individuals to vote and for getting its candidates onto general election ballots throughout the country. In many instances, moderate voters saw Tea Party candidates as being too extreme in their ideology.10 This was a likely reason why voters did not fully embrace them, and as a result, made it difficult for voters in certain parts of the country to base their voting decisions solely on the state of the economy. Voters used their partisanship in order to balance their partisan preferences against candidates they felt were too far outside of mainstream politics. While the Tea Party did win major upsets in Senate races in Wisconsin, Kentucky and Florida, the group also contributed to losses in Nevada and Delaware, where Republicans were favored to win early in the campaign. In sum, the results indicate that individual voters’ political partisanship remained a constant factor in their voting decisions and thus biased their economic perceptions; this process limited the impact of the economic vote.
The 2010 election results also point to another limitation of the economic voting hypothesis. The final election tallies make it difficult to assess whether individual voting decisions of leaning Democrats and Independent voters caused these voters to stay home on election day, or, if they did vote, whether they were willing to vote for an alternative party. From the results, coupled with an overall enthusiasm gap among Republican voters, the odds were in favor of leaning Democrats and Independent voters choosing the Republicans over the Democrats.
Finally, past electoral patterns have indicated that it is more likely that voters engage in partisan voting, rather than in economic voting, in midterm congressional elections. Voters’ economic perceptions therefore become an extension of their partisan preferences. An earlier study using American National Election Study (ANES) data from 1980 to 2008, found that voters are less likely to engage in economic voting in House elections when compared to presidential elections (Brogan, 2009). For instance, the effects of partisanship on voting for a House incumbent within a particular district is six times the size as voters’ national economic retrospective assessments. For presidential elections, the differential between partisanship and economic perceptions is roughly two to one. As a result, partisanship remains a primary factor in voters’ decisions at the polls in congressional contests. The conditioning process (voters’ economic perceptions by their partisanship) results in changes to the probability of voting for the incumbent party by less than 1 percentage point (Brogan, 2009). Even though leaning Democrats and Independents are less likely to support the Democratic Party, this does not mean economic voting is an efficient form of democratic accountability. As was the case in the UK general election, the efficacy of the economic vote would be dampened by voters’ partisanship. Such an outcome made it difficult for the Republican Party to win a majority of seats in both chambers.
To conclude, the economic-minded partisan model indicates a significant interactive relationship between voters’ partisanship and their economic perceptions in explaining vote choice in both the UK and US. The results suggest that the economic vote works in both systems. However the process of economic voting is limited by the conditioning of voters’ economic perceptions by their partisanship, as well as by the difficulties of using national level factors to help explain local political outcomes.
In the near term, the Cameron government and Obama administration are going to continue to face economic-minded partisan voters. They will likely be forced to focus on policies and positions that attempt to shift voters’ focus away from the negative aspects of the economy and to push supporters (this includes leaning, weak, and strong partisans) to stick with their own parties’ candidates during the next election. For this governing strategy to be effective, incumbent party supporters must continue to perceive that their party’s policy positions will improve the economy, regardless, even if most individuals continue to have negative economic perceptions. Economic voting in the near term will likely continue in both the US and UK; however, the impact of this process would be blunted by the effects of voters’ partisanship, thus making it difficult for incumbents in both countries to stay in power. Thus, the new norm for the Obama administration and Cameron government is more electoral volatility, and less political stability, as a result of economic fluctuations.
Appendix
The data used to test the model on the UK election comes from the 2010 British Election Study (British Election Survey, 2010). Data used for the American case come from the Pew Foundation’s Political Survey (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2010) conducted in February 2010 and September 2010. The economic-minded partisan model estimates incumbent party vote choice – Labour in the UK, the Democrats in the US. Two-stage probit estimations are used to calculate the model. Because of endogeneity concerns in the model, voters’ partisanship is considered an instrumental variable. Dependent and independent variables used in the model are defined as shown in Table 10.3.
Table 10.3 Defining the variables for the economic-minded partisan model
Dependent variable
Comments
Incumbent vote choice
The dependent variable is specified as a dichotomous variable that provides two choices; ‘0’ for those voters who did not vote for the incumbent party and ‘1’ for those voters who voted for the incumbent party.
Independent variables
Comments
Partisanship
The variable has been coded on a six-point scale (a five-point scale in the US; the Pew Survey does not include a question for weak partisans only for leaning partisans) to capture differences of partisan supporters from both the incumbent and opposition parties. Lower values on this variable indicate partisans who support the opposition party, while higher values specify incumbent partisan supporters. Third party and independent supporters are coded as ‘4’ in the American case. Third party supporters and independent voters and coded as ‘0’ in the British case.
Sociotropic retrospective economic perceptions
These evaluations are based on voters’ perceptions of changes in the economy over the 12 months prior to the election. The variable is coded as ‘1’ equals ‘the economy has gotten better, or the economy has stayed the same,’ and ‘0’ equals ‘the economy has gotten worse.’
Economic-minded partisans
This variable specifies the cross-product interaction between voters’ partisanship and their sociotropic economic retrospective assessments. The variable ranges from a minimum of zero to a maximum of six (five in the American case, due to the coding of the Pew Survey), with higher values representing strong partisan suppo
rters of the incumbent party who felt the economy has ‘gotten better or stayed the same’ over the past year, and lower values representing voters who felt the economy had ‘gotten worse’ over the past year.
Previous incumbent party vote choice
This variable is binary and is coded as ‘1’ for voters who voted for the incumbent party during the last election and ‘0’ for those voters who did not vote for the incumbent party during the last general election. This variable is not included in the American estimates because the Pew Survey did not ask this question of voters.
Liberal Democrats
This variable is binary, with ‘1’ equaling voters who identify themselves as Liberal Democrats, and ‘0’ corresponding to all other voters.
Ideology
The American model uses a five-point index of ideology. Scores above ‘3’ are for liberal voters, while scores under 3 are for conservative voters. Moderates are coded as ‘3.’ This variable is used as to calculate the partisan instrumental variable.
Notes
1. I would like to thank Lorraine Sova, Charles Tien, David R. Jones, John Bowman, Jeff Freyman, Jonathan Mendilow, Frank Rusciano, Robin Fiske-Rusciano, Barbara Franz, Lucien Frary, Jonathan Millen and Elaine Pofeldt for their helpful comments and criticisms.
2. For the UK, this estimate comes from the monthly Continuous Monitoring Survey (CMS) from June 2008 until April 2010, which was part of the 2009–10 British Election Study (http://bes.utdallas.edu/2009/cms-data.php). For the US, this figure comes from the average (January 2010 to October 2010) of the Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index of respondents who said economic conditions were ‘fair or poor’ (www.gallup.com/poll/110821/Gallup-Daily-US-Economic-Conditions.aspx).
3. Ibid.
4. The data used for the UK election comes from the 2010 BES. Data used for the American case comes from the Pew Foundation’s Political Survey conducted in February 2010 and September 2010.
5. A test of equality of coefficients for the two time periods indicates significant differences in all of the model’s parameters.
6. In addition to the UK case, a test of equality of coefficients for the two election time periods in the US indicates significant differences in all of the model’s parameters.
7. In the British case, as of January 2011 the Labour Party began to beat the Tories among British voters in their vote intention if general election were to be held tomorrow (http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/voting-intention). This has held true to the time of this writing (May 2011). In the US, at the height of the campaign, the Democratic and Republican parties had equal favorability ratings, even though the Republican Party consistently beat the Democrats on the generic ballot measure throughout the campaign (www.gallup.com/poll/143213/Republican-Democratic-Party-Favorability-Identical.aspxz).
8. http://2010central.gallup.com/2010/04/conservative-enthusiasm-surging.html.
9. This was the case in senate races in Nevada and Delaware, where Republican candidates were seen as too ideologically extreme, even though most voters felt the economy was the most important election issue. In the Nevada Senate race, approximately 66 percent of all voters said the economy was the most important issue in the election but a majority of these voters (51 percent) chose the incumbent candidate over the opposition candidate. A reason for this was due to voters feeling (45 percent) the Republican candidate was ‘too conservative’. In Delaware 86 percent of voters were worried about the economy and from this group 53 percent supported the Democratic candidate. Overall within the Delaware electorate, a plurality of voters (45 percent) had a negative opinion of the Tea Party and of these individuals, 93 percent voted Democrat.
10. An example of this was conservative candidate Christine O’Donnell who ran for Senate in Delaware. Ms O’Donnell was the Tea Party-backed candidate in the Republican primary. She ended up beating Republican incumbent Mike Castle to win the nomination to run in the general election.
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Part III
The Shifting Ground of Public Policy
11
The Politics and Changing Political Economy of Health Care in the US and the UK
The Legacy of the Crash Page 27