Abstract
Do citizens turnout to vote because of changes in their personal financial situation or are they influenced by the nation’s economic performance? Previous research on this question is far from united. We attempt to unify the disparate literature on the effects of pocketbook and sociotropic evaluations on voter turnout in midterm and presidential elections. Our analysis of ANES data from 1978 to 2004, based on a reference-dependent model of voter turnout, indicates that both pocketbook and sociotropic considerations affect individuals’ decision of whether to vote in midterm elections. Those who perceive that over the last year their own financial situation has improved relative to the economy are less likely to vote than those who view the economy as outperforming their own financial situation.
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Notes
Because we are examining micro-level decision making we rely on individuals’ perceptions of their financial situation and the condition of the nation’s economy rather than objective measures of these circumstances such as the change in family income and GDP.
Of course, relative monetary success is not the only determinant of happiness (Van Boven and Gilovich 2003), but it does strongly influence people’s sense of well-being.
We also explored the possibility of using ANES panel data (1990–1992; 1992–1994; 2000–2002). In doing so, we compared how people felt that they were doing financially relative to the Joneses from one year to another. That is, some people may feel that they are getting ahead of the Joneses one year but then falling behind the Joneses a couple of years later (or vice versa). Thus, perhaps it is the change in perceptions that matter more than, if not as much as, one’s current situation. Based on our expectation that those who feel that they are falling behind are more likely to vote, one could expect that those who felt that they were once getting ahead of the Joneses but are now falling behind are more likely to vote than those who have always felt that they were falling behind. In short, panel data allowed us to look at whether the change in one’s keeping up with the Joneses status influenced the likelihood of turnout. Interestingly, the change in the keeping up with the Joneses status did not influence turnout. Combined with our results from the cross-sectional data, this shows that people’s perception of how they are doing today relative to the Joneses, but not how they have done over time, is what influences turnout.
There is considerable evidence to suggest that misreporting on the part of respondents has little effect on the results of turnout models (Katosh and Traugott 1981; Sigelman 1982); therefore, utilizing validated instead of self-reported ANES data is unnecessary. For counterevidence on this subject, see Silver et al. (1986) and Presser and Traugott (1992).
“We are interested in how people are getting along financially these days. Would you say that you (and your family living here) are better off or worse off financially than you were a year ago?” (Sapiro et al. 1999). We did not use the 5-point scale for pocketbook evaluations because it is not available in every survey in our analysis.
Now thinking about the economy in the country as a whole, would you say that over the past year the nation’s economy has gotten better, stayed about the same, or gotten worse?” (Sapiro et al. 1999). We did not use the 5-point scale for sociotropic evaluations because it is not available in every survey in our analysis.
We do not create a typical interaction term by simply multiplying pocketbook and sociotropic evaluations because the resulting term would not appropriately scale our keeping up with the Joneses categories. For example, if one were to code both variables from −1 (negative evaluation) to +1 (positive evaluation) and then multiply pocketbook and sociotropic evaluations, those with negative pocketbook evaluations and positive sociotropic evaluations would have the same score (−1) as those with positive pocketbook evaluations and negative sociotropic evaluations (−1). In our framework, however, the behavior of those falling behind the Joneses should be different from that of those getting ahead of the Joneses. Therefore, we created the nine dummy variables to represent the interaction between pocketbook and sociotropic evaluations across the three possible response categories (negative, neutral, or positive) for both variables. In sum, our nine dummy variables are interaction terms but are not created in a traditional fashion.
Those falling behind are individuals who have combined negative pocketbook evaluations with positive or neutral sociotropic evaluations or neutral pocketbook evaluations with positive sociotropic evaluations. Those who are keeping pace have identical pocketbook and sociotropic evaluations. Those who are getting ahead combine positive pocketbook evaluations with neutral or negative sociotropic evaluations or neutral pocketbook evaluations with negative sociotropic evaluations.
Similar to Nicholson and Segura (1999), we run the voter turnout models only for those living in a congressional district where a challenger was present; therefore, respondents from districts that featured an unopposed incumbent when they were surveyed are not included in our analysis.
To account for differences across elections, we control for the year of the election. However, we clustered on election-year in Tables 1, 4, 5, and 6 because showing all of the election-year controls makes viewing these results quite cumbersome, and the results are nearly identical without them. These results are available upon request.
There is almost no correlation between income and perceptions of keeping up with the Joneses; therefore, the effect of the interplay of sociotropic and pocketbook evaluations on turnout is independent of income.
This result also held when we created a simple dummy variable coded 1 for those whose sociotropic evaluations were more positive than their pocketbook evaluation and 0 otherwise. However, this variable lumps together those who perceive that they are falling behind the Joneses with those who think that they are keeping pace with the Joneses. Therefore, we omit the results from the tables.
The value of each independent variable is set to either the mean or median as follows: political efficacy (public officials do not care about people like me), strength of partisanship (weak), education (high school degree), age (45 years), income ($30K–$40K), race (white), and gender (female).
We examined these specific years separately in evaluating our results after controlling for Arceneaux’s (2003) blame attribution variable—available only for 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996. As we demonstrate in Tables 5 and 6 by removing blame attribution, it is the specific years (not blame attribution) that influences the significance of the keeping up with the Joneses effect.
The ANES Cumulative Data File groups economic, business, and consumer issues. The 2004 percentage was derived from a question that probes what is the most important issue rather than problem because of a change in question wording by the ANES.
These percentages are of those who expressed an opinion on which issue is the most important problem.
We accounted for Arceneaux’s (2003) blame attribution explanation in Tables 5 and 6 by utilizing the ANES question on whether government policies had improved, made no difference, or worsened the economy. This variable is only available for 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996, and its inclusion in our models did not alter the significance of our findings.
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Acknowledgements
Kim Gross, Eric Lawrence, Michael Malbin, and Forrest Maltzman provided valuable comments on previous drafts of this paper. Lee Sigelman was especially helpful in providing suggestions on many drafts of this paper. We thank Gary C. Jacobson, Stephen P. Nicholson, and Gary M. Segura for sharing their data with us.
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Appendix 1
Appendix 1
Variable | Coding rules |
|---|---|
Pocketbook evaluationsa | 0 = financial situation has gotten worse over the past year |
1 = financial situation has remained the same over the past year | |
2 = financial situation has gotten better over the past year | |
Sociotropic evaluationsa | 0 = economy has gotten worse over the past year |
1 = economy has remained the same over the past year | |
2 = economy has gotten better over the past year | |
Candidate spending ratio | Spending of the higher spending candidate (in dollars) / Spending of the lower spending candidate (in dollars) |
Political efficacy | 0 = public officials do not care about people like me |
1 = public officials do care about people like me | |
Strength of partisanship | 0 = pure independent |
1 = independent partisan | |
2 = weak partisan | |
3 = strong partisan | |
Education | 1 = less than a high school degree |
2 = high school degree | |
3 = some college | |
4 = bachelor’s degree | |
5 = post college education | |
Age | Respondent’s age in years |
Income | 1 = 0 to $10k |
2 = $10,001 to $20k | |
3 = $20,001 to $30k | |
4 = $30,001 to $40k | |
5 = $40,001 to $50k | |
6 = $50,001k to $60k | |
7 = $60,001 to $75k | |
8 = $75,001 to $90k | |
9 = $90,001 and up in 1998 dollars | |
Race | 0 = non-white |
1 = white | |
Gender | 0 = female |
1 = male |
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Killian, M., Schoen, R. & Dusso, A. Keeping Up with the Joneses: The Interplay of Personal and Collective Evaluations in Voter Turnout. Polit Behav 30, 323–340 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-007-9051-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-007-9051-8