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Monday, April 03, 2017

Do Election Outcomes Matter?

Lane Kenworthy:

Do election outcomes matter?: Most Americans identify as either a Democrat or a Republican. As figure 1 shows, the Democrats currently enjoy an advantage of about ten percentage points. Vote totals in elections for the presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives are often closer than this, and in recent elections American voters have been fairly evenly split between the two parties.

Figure 1. Party identification
Share of US adults. Question: “Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as a …?” ANES has seven response options: strong Democrat, weak Democrat, independent leaning Democrat, independent, independent leaning Republican, weak Republican, strong Republican. GSS has eight response options: strong Democrat, not strong Democrat, independent leaning Democrat, independent, independent leaning Republican, not strong Republican, strong Republican, other party. “Democrat” here is the three Democrat groups. “Republican” is the three Republican groups. Those choosing “other party” in the GSS, usually just 1% or 2%, are excluded. Data sources: American National Election Studies, electionstudies.org, series party identification; General Social Survey, sda.berkeley.edu, series partyid.

The political left and right tend to differ along three main axes. One is economic, with the left preferring more government support for security and fairness and the right prioritizing freedom for individuals and firms. A second is social-cultural, with the left here emphasizing individual liberty and the right privileging order, tradition, and community. A third is foreign policy. Here the left has tended to be more isolationist, the right more favorably disposed to intervention abroad. In the United States, the Democrats and the Republicans have differed on the economic axis since the early 1930s and on the social-cultural and foreign policy axes since the late 1960s.

Given these differing aims and priorities, election results should produce differences in economic and social outcomes. Do they? ...

    Posted by on Monday, April 3, 2017 at 04:45 PM in Economics, Politics | Permalink  Comments (55)


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