Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T05:42:52.111Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Economic distress and voting: evidence from the subprime mortgage crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2021

Andrew B. Hall ,
Jesse Yoder Open the ORCID record for Jesse Yoder [Opens in a new window]  and
Nishant Karandikar
Andrew B. Hall
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Stanford University, 616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA94305, USA
Jesse Yoder*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Stanford University, 616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA94305, USA
Nishant Karandikar
Affiliation:
Department of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University, 616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA94305, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: yoderj@stanford.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We use nationwide deed-level records on home foreclosures to examine the effects of economic distress on electoral outcomes and individual voter turnout. County-level difference-in-differences estimates show that counties that suffered larger increases in foreclosures did not punish or reward members of the incumbent president's party more than less affected counties. Linking the Ohio voter file to individual foreclosures, difference-in-differences estimates show that individuals whose homes were foreclosed on were less likely to turn out, rather than being mobilized. However, in 2016 counties more exposed to foreclosures supported Trump at substantially higher rates. Taken together, the evidence suggests that the effect of local economic distress on incumbent performance is generally close to zero and only becomes substantial in unusual circumstances.

Keywords

Causal inferenceeconomic votingforeclosures
Type
Original Article
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 327 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achen, CH and Bartels, LM (2004) Blind retrospection. Electoral responses to drought, flu, and shark attacks. Unpublished Manuscript.Google Scholar
Alesina, A, Londregan, J and Rosenthal, H (1993) A model of the political economy of the United States. American Political Science Review 87, 12–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alt, JE, Barfort, S and Lassen, DD (2017) The effects of income and unemployment shocks on political preferences. NBER Political Economy Conference, October.Google Scholar
Angrist, JD and Pischke, J-S (2009) Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ansolabehere, S, Snyder, JM Jr and Stewart, C III (2001) Candidate positioning in US house elections. American Journal of Political Science 45, 136–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashworth, S and Bueno De Mesquita, E (2014) Is voter competence good for voters? Information, rationality, and democratic performance. American Political Science Review 108, 565–587.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Autor, D, Dorn, D, Hanson, G and Majlesi, K (2016 a) Importing political polarization? The electoral consequences of rising trade exposure. Technical report National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Autor, D, Dorn, D, Hanson, G and Majlesi, K (2016 b) A note on the effect of rising trade exposure on the 2016 presidential election. Working Paper.Google Scholar
Bilinski, A and Hatfield, LA (2019) Nothing to see here? Non-inferiority approaches to parallel trends and other model assumptions. Working Paper.Google Scholar
Cramer, KJ (2016) The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Benedictis-Kessner, J and Warshaw, C (2019) Accountability for the economy at all levels of Government in United States Elections.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dehdari, S (2018) Economic distress and support for far-right parties—evidence from Sweden. Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Long, JB and Lang, K (1992) Are all economic hypotheses false? Journal of Political Economy 100, 1257–1272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ding, P and Li, F (2019) A bracketing relationship between difference-in-differences and lagged-dependent-variable adjustment. Political Analysis 27, 605–615.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fair, RC (1978) The effect of economic events on votes for president. The Review of Economics and Statistics 60, 159–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gay, C (2012) Moving to opportunity: the political effects of a housing mobility experiment. Urban Affairs Review 48, 147–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelman, A and Loken, E (2014) The statistical crisis in science data-dependent analysis—A “Garden of forking paths”—explains why many statistically significant comparisons don't hold up. American Scientist 102, 460.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, A and Malhotra, N (2008) Do statistical reporting standards affect what is published? Publication bias in two leading political science journals. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 3, 313–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, J and McElwee, S (2019) The differential effects of economic conditions and racial attitudes in the election of Donald Trump. Perspectives on Politics 17, 358–379.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Healy, A and Lenz, GS (2014) Substituting the end for the whole: why voters respond primarily to the election-year economy. American Journal of Political Science 58, 31–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Healy, A and Lenz, GS (2017) Presidential voting and the local economy: evidence from two population-based datasets. The Journal of Politics 79, 1419–1432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, SJ, Herron, MC and Lewis, JB (2010) Economic crisis, Iraq, and race: a study of the 2008 presidential election. Election Law Journal 9, 41–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, AR (2018) Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. New York City, NY: The New Press.Google Scholar
Inglehart, R and Norris, P (2016) Trump, Brexit and the rise of populism economic have-nots and cultural backlash. Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malgouyres, C (2017) Trade shocks and far-right voting: evidence from French presidential elections. Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCall, L and Orloff, AS (2017) The multidimensional politics of inequality: taking stock of identity politics in the US presidential election of 2016. The British Journal of Sociology 68, S34–S56.Google ScholarPubMed
McCartney, W (2017) Household financial distress and voter participation. Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mian, A, Sufi, A and Trebbi, F (2010) The political economy of the U.S. mortgage default crisis. The American Economic Review 100, 1967–1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mian, A, Sufi, A and Trebbi, F (2015) Foreclosures, house prices, and the real economy. The Journal of Finance 70, 2587–2634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mutz, DC (2018) Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 201718155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, S (2018) Accountability in American legislatures. Book manuscript.Google Scholar
Simonsohn, U, Nelson, LD and Simmons, JP (2014) P-curve: a key to the file-drawer. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143, 534.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Squire, P, Wolfinger, RE and Glass, DP (1987) Residential mobility and voter turnout. American Political Science Review 81, 45–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stigler, GJ (1973) General economic conditions and national elections. The American Economic Review 63, 160–167.Google Scholar
Verba, S, Schlozman, KL and Brady, HE (1995) Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Yagan, D (2016) Enduring employment losses from the great recession? Longitudinal worker-level evidence. Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Hall et al. supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Hall et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 404.4 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Hall et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VYXB4B
Link