Positional Voting in Times of Crisis: Europeans’ Response to Fiscal Austerity

Recent literature on electoral behavior highlights the multiple facets of the economic vote. Studies find that in addition to the traditional valence aspect of economic voting, citizens base their vote on their policy position. While all voters seek economic prosperity, preferences vary on economic policies, and positional policy evaluations can lead to different vote choices (see e.g. Lewis-Beck and Nadeau, 2011). However, this article argues that in times of crises, this mechanism is interrupted. When confronted with severe economic distress, policy opinion is less in line with people’s overall ideological leaning because the latter does not provide sufficient cues to assess economic realities effectively. Preliminary analysis of large-scale comparative data from across Europe suggests that following the global financial recession, public response to fiscal austerity in crisis-ridden nations was overwhelmingly negative. Although voters may be divided in their ideological stance, governing parties in most countries faced electoral punishment across population groups if they chose to pursue austerity measures. The results indicate that economic policies are a crucial dimension of voter calculus next to widely-studied retrospective evaluations. More broadly, the findings implicate that while fiscal retrenchment may be economically justified in some situations, it is likely to be politically costly for incumbents, irrespective of their electorate’s ideological views.