Economic Voting in Times of Economic Crisis

Economic voting under the economic crisis: Evidence from Greece

“…Two explanations where given. First as Rattinger and Steinbrecher (2011) argue, the lack of stronger effects of economic voting is partly a result of the successful actions of the grand coalition to reduce the consequences of the economic and financial crisis. Secondly, the analysis by Anderson and Hecht (2012) suggests that voters decided not to blame the government for the nation's economic downturns since they treated the economic crisis as a shock exogenous to the domestic politics.…”

Economic Voting under Coalition Governments: Evidence from Germany

“…A few early empirical studies of German elections point to the importance of the economy for electoral outcomes and government popularity (Fro¨chling 1998;Feld and Kirchga¨ssner 2000;Rattinger and Faas 2001), but scholars have recently begun devoting more attention to these relationships (Faas 2010;Rattinger and Steinbrecher 2011;Steinbrecher and Steiner 2011;Zohlnho¨fer 2011;Anderson and Hecht 2012). One possible reason for the paucity of research in the past is that economic voting may be difficult to detect in Germany due to its parliamentary system and coalition governments.…”

Errors have been made, others will be blamed: issue engagement and blame shifting in Prime Minister speeches during the economic crisis in Europe

“…Examples of this are: PASOK, the Greek Socialist Party, that was all but annihilated in the May 2012 election, and, among others, Labour (UK, 2010), PSOE (Spain, 2011), CDA (Netherlands, 2010) and Venstre (Denmark, 2011) -all suffered major electoral losses and lost control of the government. Several studies indeed demonstrate that voters have punished their governments for the economic crisis and its consequences (Palmer and Whitten, 2011;Rattinger and Steinbrecher, 2011;Anderson and Hecht, 2012;Marsh and Mikhaylov, 2012;Nezi, 2012;Bartels, 2014;Fraile and Lewis-Beck, 2014;Kriesi, 2014;Dassonneville and Lewis-Beck, 2014). These findings fit into the larger framework of so-called economic voting.…”

“…Economic crises threaten the well-being of people, and they become better informed about the state of the economy (Krosnick 1990;Krosnick and Kinder 1990;Miller and Krosnick 2000), which increases the salience of the economy for voters in general (Singer 2011;Singer 2013;Traber et al 2018), and specifically for their voting decision (Gomez and Wilson 2006;Anderson 2007). Indeed, recent research confirms that economic voting took place during the recent economic crisis (Palmer and Whitten 2011;Rattinger and Steinbrecher 2011;Anderson and Hecht 2012;Bellucci et al 2012;Marsh and Mikhaylov 2012;Nezi 2012;Bartels 2014;Fraile and Lewis-Beck 2014;Kriesi 2014;Dassonneville and Lewis-Beck 2014).…”