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Ordinary Economic Voting Behavior in the Extraordinary Election of Adolf Hitler

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2008

GARY KING ,
ORI ROSEN ,
MARTIN TANNER  and
ALEXANDER F. WAGNER
GARY KING
Affiliation:
David Florence Professor of Government, Department of Government, Harvard University, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail: King@Harvard.Edu.
ORI ROSEN
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso, Bell Hall 221, El Paso, TX 79968. E-mail: ori@math.utep.edu.
MARTIN TANNER
Affiliation:
Professor of Statistics, Department of Statistics, Northwestern University, 2006 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208. E-mail: tanm@neyman.stats.nwu.edu.
ALEXANDER F. WAGNER
Affiliation:
Swiss Finance Institute Assistant Professor of Finance, Swiss Banking Institute, University of Zurich, Plattenstrasse 14, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland. E-mail: wagner@isb.uzh.ch.
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Abstract

The enormous Nazi voting literature rarely builds on modern statistical or economic research. By adding these approaches, we find that the most widely accepted existing theories of this era cannot distinguish the Weimar elections from almost any others in any country. Via a retrospective voting account, we show that voters most hurt by the depression, and most likely to oppose the government, fall into separate groups with divergent interests. This explains why some turned to the Nazis and others turned away. The consequences of Hitler's election were extraordinary, but the voting behavior that led to it was not.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 68 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 951 - 996
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2008

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