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Political preferences in times of crisis: Economic voting in the 2011 Polish elections

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Abstract

This article is a case study of a single election in a single country focusing on the economic theory of voting during the 2011 parliamentary election in Poland. These are very specific elections, first because of the context – global economic crisis, and second, because for the first time after collapse of communism the incumbent party retained power by winning a second election in a row. In our analyses, we tested classic economic theory of voting hypotheses. Briefly, the hypotheses are derived from the reward/punishment model, in which it is assumed that satisfied with economic condition voters support governing parties, and dissatisfied voters favour opposition parties. The empirical tests are grounded in two alternative analytical approaches: the discrete choice and the propensity to vote models. In our analyses we use multiple regression models, in which the effects of the perceptions of economy factor on vote choice is controlled by several other independents. Main hypotheses drawn from the theory of economic voting are confirmed in our analyses. Positive assessment of the economy increases the probability of voting for incumbent parties. On the other hand, voters dissatisfied with the economic situation tend to vote for the main opposition party.

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Notes

  1. For those readers who are not familiar with the Polish parliamentary election of 2011 the basic facts are as follows. It was held on 9 October 2011. The voter turnout was 49 per cent. The results for the parties that gained seats in Parliament were as follows: PO (Civic Platform – centre-right party, senior coalition partner) 39 per cent of votes, PIS (Law and Justice – national conservative party) 30 per cent, RP (Palikot’s Movement – liberal party) 10 per cent, PSL (Polish People’s Party – centrist agrarian, junior coalition partner) 8 per cent and SLD (Democratic Left Alliance – centre left, social-democratic) 8 per cent.

  2. The space of this article does not allow us to elaborate on the numerous, interrelated phenomena that constitute Polish peculiarities. Instead let us just enumerate those that are considered profoundly important and are widely recognized as such. Apart from those listed above in the main text, several other phenomena and characterizations of the Polish political system ought to be emphasized. Among them the extremely high voter volatility, the between-block one in particular, accompanied by exceptionally low turnout. Moreover, the directly elected president and the institutional mechanisms of the Polish semi-presidentialism that contributes to – among other things – to declining effectiveness of the citizen-politicians linkage and, as a consequence to poor quality of political representation. All these negative destabilizing factors, however, co-exist with the most successful economic performance and civilizational accomplishments in the CEE region. Finally, in no other European country is the political role of religious institutions as significant as in Poland; the Catholic Church is both economically and socially powerful, and directly influences political debates as well as clearly “taking sides” in electoral campaigns. A fair description of the above phenomena and other peculiarities of Polish politics one may find in the bibliography quoted in this article (in particular in Millard, 2009; Markowski, 2006, 2008; Jasiewicz, 2003; Tworzecki, 2012).

  3. The wording of the questions related to the economy used in PNES 2011 can be found in the Appendix.

  4. We have also untangled the six components of our single composite factor. All six logistic regression models where the independent variable is one single aspect of the economic assessment show more or less the same pseudo R2, ranging from 0.34 to 0.35, which clearly means that there are no differences whatsoever, although we might note that the strongest impact is registered for the ‘current sociotropic’ evaluation and the weakest for the ‘retrospective egotropic’. More or less the same result is obtained when the dependent variable is PTV, in which case the pseudo R2 is always either 0.23 or 0.24 (for details see Appendix, Table A1). Overall, the universal message is that all six components of our complex independent variable exert a similar impact on the vote, in accordance with the theory and the economic perceptions under scrutiny and as a rule is a bit more important for sociotropic than egotropic influences.

    Table A1 The relationship between party identification and the vote (entries: percentage of party identifiers voting for particular parties
    Full size table

  5. The classic question wording for PTV is as follows: Would you indicate for each party how probable it is that you will ever vote for that party? A show card was presented with 10 categories numbered 1 to 10. Category 1 was labelled ‘We will certainly never vote for this party’ and category 10 was labelled ‘We will certainly vote for this party at some time’ (Van der Eijk et al, 2006).

  6. Results available upon request.

  7. An important control independent variable, which turned out to be fairly problematic, is party identification (PID). Initially we tried to include the PID variable in our analyses, but ultimately it turned out to be impossible for the simple reason that the strength of the association between PID and voting for a given party ‘wipes out’, suppresses all other effects (the relationship between PID and voting is presented in Table 1 in the Appendix.). Moreover, the analyses we have carried out were aimed at an analytical distinction to be applied between the classical, Michigan PID concept (namely, affective socialization) and Fiorina’s ‘running tally’ idea, a more rational-calculative phenomenon. Unfortunately, the topic is too broad and deserves a separate article. As a consequence, the remaining calculations presented in the current article do not account for the impact of party identification. Because of the problematic character of the PID variable as a control variable, we estimated a model without the PID variable.

  8. Results available upon request from the authors.

  9. There are other possible sources of data about party positions, such as party manifesto data or expert surveys. However, we want to compare the positions of voters with the positions of parties on the same dimensions. Using the positions of parties from another source means using data about the positions of parties on different dimensions as the positions of PNES respondents. This would likely result in our inability to convey the analyses we have conducted.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Polna 18/20, Warsaw, 00-625, Poland

    Michal Kotnarowski

  2. Center for the Study of Democracy, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Chodakowska 19/31, Warsaw, 03-815, Poland

    Radoslaw Markowski

Authors
  1. Michal Kotnarowski
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Correspondence to Michal Kotnarowski.

Appendix

Appendix

Figures A1, A2, A3, A4

Figure A1
figure 6

GDP per capita in Poland in current US dollars in subsequent years.

Source: World Bank (2013).

Full size image
Figure A2
figure 7

Unemployment rate (as share of total labour force) in Poland in subsequent years.

Source: World Bank (2013).

Full size image
Figure A3
figure 8

Evaluation of economic situation of the country. Share of answers ‘country economy is in good shape’ (solid line) and ‘country economy is in bad shape’ (broken line). Each point is based on survey conducted on representative sample of adult Poles.

Source: CBOS (2013).

Full size image
Figure A4
figure 9

Evaluation of economic situation of the respondents’ households. Share of answers ‘my family lives well’ (solid line) and ‘my family lives badly’ (broken line). Each point is based on survey conducted on representative sample of adult Poles.

Source: CBOS (2013).

Full size image

Table A1

Question wording of items of the economy used in Polish National Election Study 2011

Retrospective perception of economy

During last 12 month … [read out following items] has the:

  • economic situation in Poland

  • material situation of your household

    1. 1)

      definitely improved

    2. 2)

      rather improved

    3. 3)

      did not change

    4. 4)

      rather deteriorated

    5. 5)

      definitely deteriorated

    6. 6)

      volunteered: hard to say

Current perception of economy

How do you evaluate the … [read out following items]? Is it:

  • economic situation in Poland

  • material situation of your household

    1. 1)

      very good

    2. 2)

      good

    3. 3)

      neither good neither bad

    4. 4)

      bad

    5. 5)

      very bad

    6. 6)

      volunteered: hard to say

Prospective perception of economy

In your view, over the next 12 months the … [read out following items] will:

  • economic situation in Poland

  • material situation of your household

    1. 1)

      definitely improve

    2. 2)

      rather improve

    3. 3)

      not change

    4. 4)

      rather deteriorate

    5. 5)

      definitely deteriorate

    6. 6)

      volunteered: don’t know, hard to say

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Kotnarowski, M., Markowski, R. Political preferences in times of crisis: Economic voting in the 2011 Polish elections. Acta Polit 49, 431–461 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2014.20

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