Do Voters Look to the Future? Economics and Elections
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Brad Lockerbie - Author
Price: $65.00 Hardcover - 170 pages
Release Date: June 2008
ISBN10: N/A ISBN13: 978-0-7914-7481-5
Price: $21.95 Paperback - 170 pages
Release Date: July 2009
ISBN10: N/A ISBN13: 978-0-7914-7482-2
Price: $21.95 Electronic - 170 pages
Release Date: June 2008
ISBN10: N/A ISBN13: 978-0-7914-7817-2
Summary
Argues in favor of a different model of voting behavior.
Do voters look to the past, the future, or both when deciding how to vote? In Do Voters Look to the Future?, Brad Lockerbie shows voters to be more sophisticated than much of the work in political science would suggest. He argues that voters do not simply reward or punish the incumbent administration, but instead make a comparative evaluation of the likely performance of each candidate and vote for the one that will most likely provide them with a prosperous future. Making use of data from 1956 through the present, Lockerbie finds that voters take into account both what has happened and what they think will happen when they vote. He finds these economic evaluations to be strongly related to voting behavior both for the House and the Senate, as well as the presidency. Additionally, Lockerbie examines the role of these economic items to explain changes in party identification.
“…[Lockerbie’s] volume adds to the mounting evidence that voters base their decisions more on concern about the future than on their reaction to what has already passed.” — Political Science Quarterly
“This book deals with a very important subject within the economic voting literature: the significance of retrospective versus prospective judgments. It helps overcome the wrongful neglect of the prospective school.” — Michael S. Lewis-Beck, coauthor of Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies
Brad Lockerbie is Professor and Chair of Political Science at East Carolina University.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. Simple Economic Relationships
Appendix 2.1: Prospective Evaluations: Are They Partisan
Rationalization?
3. Party Identification: Is It Changeable?
Is It Explicable?
Appendix 3.1: Instrumental Variables for PIDt21 (3-Point and
7-Point Scales)
Appendix 3.2: Party Identification as a Function of Retrospective
and Prospective Economic Evaluations with
Actual Past Party Identification (3-Point and
7-Point Scales)
Appendix 3.3: Party Identification as a Function of Changes
in Evaluations (3-Point and 7-Point Scales)
4. Presidential Elections: A More Comprehensive
View
5. Congressional Elections: Yes, the Senate Too
6. Economics and Politics: Egocentric or
Sociotropic?
Appendix 6.1: Retrospective Egocentric and Sociotropic
Items Predicting Political Attitudes: 1992
Appendix 6.2: Retrospective Egocentric, Sociotropic, and
Prospective Items Predicting Political
Attitudes: 1992
Appendix 6.3: Retrospective Egocentric, Sociotropic, and
Prospective Economic Evaluations, Ideology,
and Party Identification Predicting Political
Attitudes: 1992
