Diffusing Political Concerns: How Unemployment Information passed between social Ties Influence Danish Voters

James E. Alt, Amalie Jensen, Horacio Larreguy, David Lassen and John Marshall

No 22-1292, TSE Working Papers from Toulouse School of Economics (TSE)

Abstract: While social pressure is widely believed to influence voters, evidence that informa-tion passed between social ties affects beliefs, policy preferences, and voting behav-ior is limited. We investigate whether information about unemployment shocks dif-fuses through networks of strong and mostly weak social ties and influences voters in Denmark. We link surveys with population-level administrative data that logs un-employment shocks afflicting respondents’ familial, vocational, and educational net-works. Our results show that the share of second-degree social ties—individuals that voters learn about indirectly—that became unemployed within the last year increases a voter’s perception of national unemployment, self-assessed risk of becoming unem-ployed, support for unemployment insurance, and voting for left-wing political parties. Voters’ beliefs about national aggregates respond to all shocks equally, whereas sub-jective perceptions and preferences respond primarily to unemployment shocks afflict-ing second-degree ties in similar vocations. This suggests that information diffusion through social ties principally affects political preferences via egotropic—rather than sociotropic—motives.

Date: 2022-01-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-ias, nep-net and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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