Ties that matter: An empirical test of a social theory of economic voting

The overall aim of this paper is to advance our knowledge of how individuals’ personal economic situation impacts political preferences and vote choice. We do this by introducing the economic circumstances of an individual’s social ties – the socioeconomic network – as an important parameter in the model of economic voting. While we agree with previous research that the pocketbook is both of theoretical and empirical relevance for vote choice, we argue that previous research have had a too narrow view of what personal economy is, which may also explain the weak and mixed results on pocket-book voting. An individual is almost never entirely dependent on his/her own income or assets. The economic status of one’s social ties, such as spouse, family, and relatives, is of great importance for one’s economic security and well-being, and, we argue, for one’s political preferences and vote choice. The overall research question in the paper is how the economic status of the socioeconomic network cushions or reinforces the relationship between individual economic shocks, political preferences, and vote choice. To answer the research question, we use a novel empirical approach and combine high quality survey data from the Swedish National Election Study 2022 with data from administrative registers (Statistics Sweden), including information about the economic status of both the respondent and the respondent’s social ties.