Short-Term Electoral Forces in Western Europe: Changing Weight of the Economic Vote?

The question of weakening social cleavages and partisan ties within Western European electorates has received considerable attention. The dominant conclusion maintains that these long-term bonds have weakened, thus making for a “dealigned” voter more responsive to short-term forces, coming from candidates or issues. Voters are hence thought to “have become more like discerning consumers, picking and choosing between parties on the basis of relatively short-term considerations” (Sanders, 2003: 240). Even though scholars regularly allude to such a process of change, the notion that such short-term forces are now more active has been little tested. In this paper, we focus on a short-term electoral force of abiding interest – the economic vote. To this end, we investigate voting for the incumbent over time by means of a collection of national election survey data from a half-dozen countries across Western Europe. We analyze voting in Denmark (1994-2011), the Netherlands (1986-2010), Norway (1985-2009), Germany (1976-2013), Sweden (1985-2006) and Great-Britain (1992-2010). These nations are selected because of the quality and the quantity of their election data, which make for stronger testing. Thus, our analyses provide robust insights regarding changes in voting behavior from the 1980s to the present. We estimate theoretically compelling vote behavior models to test the evolution of the economic vote. We hypothesize that its electoral weight will have increased over time, enabling voters to hold their governments every more accountable.