The conventional wisdom of economic voting theory argues that a nation's economic performance drives electoral outcomes. Therefore, voters will hold an administration accountable for its economic stewardship. Austin Hart challenges the simplicity of this notion, drawing on cognitive-psychological research on priming to demonstrate that the intensity of voters' exposure to economic campaign messages systematically conditions the strength of the economic vote. However, this study goes further than simply saying 'campaigns matter'. Here, we learn that candidates who control the campaign narrative can capitalize on favorable economic conditions or - contrary to the predictions of conventional theory - overcome unfavorable conditions. Although the aim is not to dismiss the importance of structural variables in the study of elections, Hart shows that the choices candidates make about what to say and how often shape election outcomes in ways that cannot be explained by contextual or institutional forces alone.
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motw/Economic Voting_ A Campaign-Cen - Austin Hart.pdf

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

producers:
Cambridge University Press

Memory of the World Librarian: Slowrotation

Cover
1
Half-title page 3
Title page 5
Copyright page 6
Dedication 7
Contents 9
List of Figures 11
List of Tables 12
Acknowledgments 13
1 The Economic Voting Puzzle 15
The Insufficiency of Conventional Economic Voting Models 19
The Argument in Brief 26
Case Selection and Expectations 30
The Case against Campaign Strategy 32
Why This Study Is Different: Overcoming “Minimal Effects” 34
An Alternative to the “Clarity of Responsibility” 35
Broader Implications and Importance of the Study 38
Plan of the Book 40
2 A Campaign-Centered Theory of Economic Voting 42
Why Good Citizens Might Make for Minimal Campaign Effects 43
A New Psychology of Economic Voting: The Priming Approach 45
Bringing the Candidate Back in: Messaging Strategy 52
Empirical Implications and Hypotheses 60
Why Have Campaigns Been Ignored in Economic Voting? 63
Conclusion 64
3 Can Ads Prime the Economy? How Would We Know? US 1992 65
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Economic Recovery 67
The Challenge of Identifying Economic Activation 75
Isolating the Causes of Economic Priming 82
Conclusion 87
4 The Impact of a Surge in Economic Messages: Mexico 2006 89
Backdrop of the Campaign: The Long Shadow of 2000 91
The Campaign and the Economic Message 93
Testing for Economic Priming 99
Did Economic Campaign Ads Cause This Increase? 101
Considering Alternative Explanations 104
Conclusion 107
5 The Absent Economic Message: US and Mexico 2000 109
The Curious Case of the 2000 US Election 111
Mexico’s Democratizing Election 121
Conclusion 131
6 The Campaign-Centered Model in Comparative Perspective 132
How Does the Model Perform in Other Types of Elections? 132
Priming Beyond the Economic Vote 149
Aggregate-Level Tests of the Priming-Based Model 151
Conclusion 155
7 Conclusion 157
Central Findings 159
Implications and Unanswered Questions 164
Appendix 177
Procedure for Content-Coding Ads and Newspaper Stories 177
Chapter 1: Tests of the Conventional Economic Voting Model 179
Chapter 3: Measuring the Economic Vote and the 1992 Election 181
Chapter 4: Mexico’s 2006 Presidential Elections 186
Chapter 5: The Deactivating 2000 Elections in Mexico and the United States 192
Chapter 6: Evaluating the Generalizability of the Priming-Based Model 195
Possible Limitations 205
References 209
Index 229

"In this study I explain why economic voting is so widespread and, yet, why incumbents so often win amidst economic downturns and challengers in boom times. I account for the fact that some candidates drastically outperform the predictions of economic voting models while others underperform. More than just accounting for seemingly anomalous elections, I also explain the conditions under which incumbents win in good times and lose in bad times. To do so, I deviate from the existing approach and develop a campaign-centered theory that highlights the power of candidates to alter the strength of the economic vote strategically. argue that the conventional wisdom fails for two reasons. First, it leaves no room for political leadership. By contrast, I show that candidates wield immense power over the strength of the economic vote via political communication. Candidates and their strategists are not passive observers of a structurally- determined political fate. Campaigners across the globe spend millions of dollars crafting their communications strategy and honing a message that will make certain issues salient in public discourse and shift others to the back burner. In short, they battle to define what each election is about, and recent evidence suggests that these efforts may be successful. One of the most important findings to come out of the renewed interest in media and campaign effects in the last twenty years is that political communications can "prime," or raise the salience of, certain issues in the minds of voters. These findings, however, have not been incorporated into the vast literature on economic voting"-- Provided by publisher

"In this study I explain why economic voting is so widespread and, yet, why incumbents so often win amidst economic downturns and challengers in boom times. I account for the fact that some candidates drastically outperform the predictions of economic voting models while others underperform. More than just accounting for seemingly anomalous elections, I also explain the conditions under which incumbents win in good times and lose in bad times. To do so, I deviate from the existing approach and develop a campaign-centered theory that highlights the power of candidates to alter the strength of the economic vote strategically. argue that the conventional wisdom fails for two reasons. First, it leaves no room for political leadership. By contrast, I show that candidates wield immense power over the strength of the economic vote via political communication. Candidates and their strategists are not passive observers of a structurally- determined political fate. Campaigners across the globe spend millions of dollars crafting their communications strategy and honing a message that will make certain issues salient in public discourse and shift others to the back burner. In short, they battle to define what each election is about, and recent evidence suggests that these efforts may be successful. One of the most important findings to come out of the renewed interest in media and campaign effects in the last twenty years is that political communications can "prime," or raise the salience of, certain issues in the minds of voters. These findings, however, have not been incorporated into the vast literature on economic voting"--De l'éditeur

2025-10-27