Egocentric economic voting and changes in party choice: Great Britain 1992-2001

Abstract

Theories of economic voting argue that people who are feeling well off and who are optimistic about the future are likely to vote for the incumbent government’s return to power, whereas those suffering financially and pessimistic about the future are not. Many British cross-sectional analyses of voting patterns have produced results consistent with this argument. Those findings have been challenged, however, on the grounds that the economic evaluations cannot be considered exogenous: economic evaluations at one election may be conditioned by party choice at a previous election. This argument is tested using panel survey data on egocentric economic evaluations and party choice for two electoral cycles in Great Britain (1992-97 and 1997-2001) and found valid. These data provide virtually no evidence to sustain the economic voting theory and instead support the endogeneity case.