Economic Voting and Electoral Behavior: How Do Individual, Local, and National Factors Affect the Partisan Choice?
Year: 2005
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: What impact do income and other demographic factors have on voters' partisan choice? Using post-election surveys of 14,000 voters in ten Australian elections between 1966 and 2001, I explore the impact that individual, local and national factors have on voters' decisions. In these ten elections, the poor, foreign-born, younger voters, voters born since 1950, men, and those who are unmarried are more likely to be left-wing. Over the past 35 years, the partisan gap between men and women has closed, but the partisan gap has widened on three dimensions: between young and old; between rich and poor; and between native-born and foreign-born. At a neighbourhood level, I find that, controlling for a respondent's own characteristics, and instrumenting for neighbourhood characteristics, voters who live in richer neighbourhoods are more likely to be right-wing, while those in more ethnically diverse or unequal neighbourhoods are more likely to be left-wing. Controlling for incumbency, macroeconomic factors do not seem to affect partisan preferences - Australian voters apparently regard both major parties as equally capable of governing in booms and busts.
Source: Economics and Politics
Author: Andrew Leigh
Institution: Australian National University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3023215717