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Confronting Political—Economic Theories of Voting with Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Robert Grafstein  and
Ann Moser
Robert Grafstein
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Baldwin Hall, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. e-mail: bobgraf@arches.uga.edu
Ann Moser
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Brooks Hall, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-6254. e-mail: annwmoser@yahoo.com
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Abstract

This paper illustrates one strategy for testing a theory of economic influences on voting. We use a competitive equilibrium model of the economy to determine the impact of an individual's economic position on his or her economic interests and, ultimately, political interests. We then test whether this impact is observed in voting behavior, addressing the resulting specification and estimation problems in the context of U.S. presidential election data. Our empirical results suggest that, despite these formidable problems, we can usefully connect political-economic models and discrete-choice (probit) models of voting.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , 2001 , pp. 362 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by the Society for Political Methodology 

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