Income Shocks in Family Networks and Economic Voting

This paper aims to advance our knowledge about how the economic situation impacts political preferences and vote choice. We do this by introducing the economic circumstances in an individual’s social ties as a parameter in the model of economic voting. We argue that previous research has had a too narrow view of personal economy – an individual is rarely entirely dependent on their income and is likely affected by unanticipated changes in the personal finances of social ties. We hypothesize that a sizeable negative income change within an individual’s family network should be associated with an increased probability of voting for the left, and for populist-radical right parties, especially when the respondent also experiences an income drop. To test this, we use a novel empirical approach combining high-quality survey panel data from the Swedish National Election Study 2018 and 2022 with administrative data over time from Statistics Sweden, including income-related information about the respondent and the respondent’s family ties. The preliminary findings suggest income shocks in networks impacts voting for the Sweden Democrats among respondents who also experience economic hardship.