Economic Voting and Electoral Behaviour: How do Individual, Local and National Factors Affect the Partisan Choice?

Andrew Leigh

No 489, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University

Abstract: What impact do income and other demographic factors have on a voter’s partisan choice? Using post-election surveys of 14,000 voters in ten Australian elections between 1966 and 2001, I explore the impact that individual, local and national factors have on voters’ decisions. In these ten elections, the poor, foreign-born, younger voters, voters born since 1950, men, and those who are unmarried are more likely to be left-wing. Over the past 35 years, the partisan gap between men and women has closed, but the partisan gap has widened on three dimensions: between young and old; between rich and poor; and between native-born and foreign-born. At a neighbourhood level, I find that, controlling for a respondent’s own characteristics, and instrumenting for neighbourhood characteristics, voters who live in richer neighbourhoods are more likely to be right-wing, while those in more ethnically diverse or unequal neighbourhoods are more likely to be left-wing. Controlling for incumbency, macroeconomic factors do not seem to affect partisan preferences – Australian voters apparently regard both major parties as equally capable of governing in booms and busts.

Keywords: elections; voting; partisanship; income; inequality; neighbourhood effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D72 E24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2005-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mac and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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Related works:
Journal Article: ECONOMIC VOTING AND ELECTORAL BEHAVIOR: HOW DO INDIVIDUAL, LOCAL, AND NATIONAL FACTORS AFFECT THE PARTISAN CHOICE? (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:auu:dpaper:489

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