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Bread and Peace Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections

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Abstract

A simple ``Bread and Peace'' model shows that aggregate votes forPresident in postwar elections were determined entirely byweighted-average growth of real disposable personal income percapita during the incumbent party's term and the cumulativenumbers of American military personnel killed in action as aresult of U.S. intervention in the Korean and Vietnamese civilwars. The model is subjected to robustness tests against twenty-two variations in functional form inspired by the extensiveliterature on presidential voting. Not one of these variationsadds value to the Bread and Peace model or significantly perturbsits coefficients.

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  1. Department of Economics, Göteborg University, Box 640, S-405 30, Göteborg, Sweden

    Douglas A. Hibbs Jr.

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  1. Douglas A. Hibbs Jr.
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Hibbs, D.A. Bread and Peace Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections. Public Choice 104, 149–180 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005292312412

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