Economics, Partisanship and Elections: Economic Voting in the 2010 UK Parliamentary and US Congressional Elections

Abstract

The outcome of the 2010 UK general election and the US midterm elections provided an unequivocal reminder of the impact of economic downturns on electoral politics. A vast literature on economic voting confirms that voters typically respond to economic fluctuations; they tend to reward incumbents for a good economy and punish them for a poor one (Lewis-Beck and Stegmeir, 2007). Though the reward–punish hypothesis is a common theme in the economic voting literature, there are limits to its application. It is unable to fully capture the dynamic in which voters select their party’s candidate regardless of economic performance (Campbell et al., 1960; Evans and Anderson, 2006; Gerber and Huber, 2009).

I would like to thank Lorraine Sova, Charles Tien, David R. Jones, John Bowman, Jeff Freyman, Jonathan Mendilow, Frank Rusciano, Robin Fiske- Rusciano, Barbara Franz, Lucien Frary, Jonathan Millen and Elaine Pofeldt for their helpful comments and criticisms.