Why does the relationship between income and partisanship vary across U.S. regions? Some answers have focused on economic context (in poorer environments, economics is more salient), while others have focused on racial context (in racially diverse areas, richer voters oppose the party favoring redistribution). Using 73 million geocoded registration records and 185,000 geocoded precinct returns, we examine income-based voting across local areas. We show that the political geography of income-based voting is inextricably tied to racial context, and only marginally explained by economic context. Within homogeneously non-black localities, contextual income has minimal bearing on the income-party relationship. The correlation between income and partisanship is strong in heavily black areas of the Old South and other areas with a history of racialized poverty, but weaker elsewhere, including in urbanized areas of the South. The results demonstrate that the geography of income-based voting is inseparable from racial context.

Recent studies of representation at the national and state levels have provided evidence that elected officials’ votes, political parties’ platforms, and enacted policy choices are more responsive to the preferences of the affluent, while those with average incomes and the poor have little or no impact in the political process. Yet, this research on the dominance of the affluent has overlooked key partisan differences in the electorate. In this era of hyper-partisanship, we argue that representation occurs through the party system, and we test whether taking this reality into account changes the story of policy dominance by the rich. We combine data on public preferences and state party positions to test for income bias in parties’ representation of their own co-partisans. The results show an interesting pattern in which under-representation of the poor is driven by Democratic parties pushing the more liberal social policy stances of rich Democrats and Republican parties reflecting the particularly conservative economic policy preferences of Rich Republicans. Thus, we have ample evidence that the wealthy, more often than not, do call the shots, but that the degree to which this disproportionate party responsiveness produces less representative policies depends on the party in power and the policy dimension being considered. We conclude by linking this pattern of influence and “coincidental representation” to familiar changes which define the transformation of the New Deal party system.[insert article abstract]

Iversen and Soskice’s (2006) notion that electoral rules affect democracies’ propensity for income redistribution is one of the political economy’s most discussed concepts. Yet, it comes with a number of caveats. Most importantly, it is not clear whether electoral rules indeed affect states’ propensity for redistribution or vice versa and thus whether or not Iversen and Soskice’s findings are endogenous and spurious. In this article, we focus on the critical case of New Zealand’s electoral reform of the 1990s and offer a comprehensive test of Iversen and Soskice’s concept. We employ the recently developed dynamic multilevel latent factor model, a Bayesian alternative to synthetic controls (Pang et al. 2021), and compare the relevant dynamics for New Zealand to those of six majoritarian democracies. Our test largely supports Iversen and Soskice’s claims; due to the lower prevalence of right (center-right) governments, proportional representation democracies tend to redistribute more than majoritarian ones.

Stata code and data file to reproduce all tables and figures in the main article.

Political parties competing in elections for the power to set public policy face the problem of making credible their policy promises to voters. I argue that this commitment problem crucially shapes party competition over redistribution. The model I develop shows that under majoritarian electoral rules, parties' efforts to achieve endogenous commitment to policies preferred by the middle class lead to different behavior and outcomes than suggested by existing theories, which either assume commitment or rule out endogenous commitment. Thus, left parties can have incentives to respond to rising income inequality by moving to the right in majoritarian systems but not under proportional representation. The model also generates new insights about the anti-left electoral bias often attributed to majoritarian electoral rules, and the strategic use of parliamentary candidates as a commitment device. I find evidence for key implications of this logic using panel data on party positions in 16 parliamentary democracies.

This dissertation examines how economic segregation shapes the provision of local public goods. Past research finds that economic segregation affects political attitudes and participation. However, few studies examine how economic segregation shapes local policy outcomes, particularly outcomes concerning local public goods. Using data on local government spending, data on ballot measures on local taxes, and data on the geographic location of affordable housing units, I find that economic segregation shapes local public goods provision in important ways. The first chapter, Income Segregation and the Provision of Local Public Goods,'' shows that economic segregation correlates with an increase in city-level spending on certain policy areas usually preferred by middle- and upper-class residents. The second chapter,Economic Segregation and Support for Local Taxes: Evidence from Municipal Ballot Measures in California,'' finds that economic segregation relates to increased support for tax increases dedicated to specific goods and services voted on by residents. I argue that, in economically segregated cities, this increased support comes from residents' decreased trust in local government, particularly in how local governments spend money. Finally, the third chapter, ``Partisanship and Affordable Housing: How Democrats and Republicans Geographically Distribute the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program,'' asks whether partisanship structures the distribution of low-income housing units to economically segregated neighborhoods using administrative data from the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program. I find little evidence to support partisan differences in the distribution of low-income housing units to low-poverty or to high-poverty neighborhoods. However, I do find that Republican administrations allocate significantly fewer low-income housing units to a neighborhood as its poverty rate increases. This suggests that partisanship may not necessarily shape the provision and distribution of new housing development for lower-income residents. Together, these findings show that economic segregation has a nuanced but significant relationship with the provision of local public goods.

This election study survey is based upon questions asked in the Canadian Election Study, but tailored for the Newfoundland and Labrador context. It was conducted by the Consortium on Electoral Democracy (C-Dem).

This dissertation argues that public opinion regarding the acceptability and desirability of income differences is affected by actual income inequality. Cross-national survey evidence is combined with laboratory and survey experiments to show that estimates regarding appropriate income differences depend on (perceptions of) real income differences. When income inequality changes, public opinion "habituates" by adjusting expectations for fair levels of inequality in the same direction as the factual change. The adjustment occurs because humans are subject to status quo bias and have a motivated tendency to believe in a just world. In the context of increasing inequality in developed democracies over the last 40 years, the implication is that normative expectations for appropriate levels of inequality have adjusted up. This habituation process helps explain why increases in inequality have not been accompanied by increased demands for redistribution and why cross-national variation in income inequality is not clearly linked to public opposition to such inequality. The dissertation starts by showing that in each of 32 countries, perceptions of occupational income inequality predict inequality ideals. The causal relationship is then established in a series of experiments. In a laboratory experiment, participants who take part in a game with unequal money prizes subsequently recommend a more unequal split of prize money than participants who play a more equal game. A survey experiment shows that the predicted adjustment also occurs with perceptions of real income inequality: survey respondents who receive information regarding true income inequality in the United States recommend larger occupational income differences as ideal than do individuals who do not receive this information. The final chapter shows that the habituation phenomenon is affected by the motivation to think of the social system as fai r: activating the system justification motive among Democrats reduces the otherwise robust partisan gap in ideal income inequalities to statistically insignificant levels. This last finding implies that the broader political context can affect the strength of the habituation process in public opinion.

We maintain that political institutions’ policy objectives are best met under conditions when they are unified, and also when their administrative leadership is effective. We apply this argument for understanding how unified Democratic and Republican governments in the American states have influenced incomes of affluent citizens. We find that affluent income gains occur under unified Republican state governments when compensation to executive agency heads is sufficiently high. These income gains are notable relative to both divided and unified partisan control of state governments. The evidence highlights the asymmetric role that bureaucratic leadership exerts for attaining policy outcomes consistent with political institutions’ policy preferences, while underscoring the limits of electoral institutions to shape policy outcomes of their own accord. Efforts at lowering the capacity of the administrative leadership constrains unified political institutions from converting their policy objectives into policy outcomes.

We evaluate whether political partisanship affects local taxes in an emerging economy. Using detailed residential property-level data in Chile, we study whether mayors’ political leanings affect the reassessment process and thus the taxes paid by home owners. In Chile, this type of tax is especially relevant since it is one of the largest sources of municipal income. To address endogeneity concerns, we use a regression discontinuity design, exploiting the quasi-experimental variation provided by close municipal elections. Our main results show that after a right-wing mayor is elected, property assessments increase up to 31% more than in a similar municipality where a left-wing mayor was elected. This effect cannot be fully explained by changes in prices or property characteristics.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic triggered ‘rally around the flag’ effects in various countries across Europe. There has been little research examining the relative relevance of political trust determinants in relation to different phases of the pandemic. This article aims to explore what role conventional determinants, objective affectedness and perceptions of containment measures played in explaining levels of political trust in Germany over the course of the pandemic. By employing OLS and FE regressions in a three-wave panel survey, I find that party identifications and evaluation of containment measures played decisive roles, while experienced income losses did not robustly shape political trust between 2020 and 2021. The trend analysis indicates that threat perceptions of the impact of containment measures on German society – but not on individuals – increasingly eroded trust in politics across various subgroups of respondents as the partisan trust gap narrowed over time.

What impact do income and other demographic factors have on a voter’s partisan choice? Using post-election surveys of 14,000 voters in 10 Australian elections between 1966 and 2001, I explore the impact that individual, local, and national factors have on voters’ decisions. In these 10 elections, the poor, foreign-born, younger voters, voters born since 1950, men, and those who are unmarried are more likely to be left-wing. Over the past 35 years, the partisan gap between men and women has closed, but the partisan gap has widened on three dimensions: between young and old; between rich and poor; and between native-born and foreign-born. At a neighborhood level, I find that, controlling for a respondent’s own characteristics, and instrumenting for neighborhood characteristics, voters who live in richer neighborhoods are more likely to be right-wing, while those in more ethnically diverse or unequal neighborhoods are more likely to be left-wing. Controlling for incumbency, macroeconomic factors do not seem to affect partisan preferences – Australian voters apparently regard both major parties as equally capable of governing in booms and busts.

Why do the rich and poor support different parties in some places? We argue that voting along class lines is more likely to occur where states can tax the income and assets of the wealthy. In low bureaucratic capacity states, the rich are less likely to participate in electoral politics because they have less to fear from redistributive policy. When wealthy citizens abstain from voting, politicians face a more impoverished electorate. Because politicians cannot credibly campaign on anti-tax platforms, they are less likely to emphasize redistribution and partisan preferences are less likely to diverge across income groups. Using cross-national survey data, we show there is more class voting in countries with greater bureaucratic capacity. We also show that class voting and fiscal capacity were correlated in the United States in the mid-1930s when state-level revenue collection and party systems were less dependent on national economic policy.

This poll, the first of two fielded November 2012, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicits public opinion on a range of political and social issues. Respondents were asked a variety of questions on topics such as preferences pertaining to the 2012 general election, presidential performance, potential candidate performance concerning current events and issues both domestic and foreign, national security, unemployment, and the economy. Those chosen were also queried with respect to their individual voting preferences, self-reported partisanship, likelihood of voting in the upcoming 2012 election, and voting history with respect to the 2008 general election. Demographic information includes sex, age, race, marital status, education level, household income, employment status, religious preference, type of residential area (e.g., urban or rural), number of children in household, political party affiliation, political philosophy, and whether respondents thought of themselves as born-again Christians.

This election study survey is based upon questions asked in the Canadian Election Study, but tailored for the Nova Scotia context. It was conducted by the Consortium on Electoral Democracy (C-Dem).

To collect data on political opinions and attitudes of Dutch citizens who have the right to vote. Data were collected in order to enlarge insight into characteristics of the Dutch political system changes that occur within the system, and degree of similarity, dissimilarity between the Dutch political system and others." This is the second of the series of National Election Studies. It was designed as a two wave panel study: the first wave was carried out shortly after the parliamentary elections of november 29, 1972. The second wave was conducted after the formation of the Den Uyl-cabinet on may 31, 1973. Data of both waves are combined in one SPSS-file. Local problems / local power structure / political opinion leadership / evaluation of local government / sense of local national and political efficacy / political organizational membership / activism / local national evaluation of results / confidence / trust in prominent persons, groups / attitude to freedom and equality changes in income / discrimination of groups / tolerance regarding daughter's choice of husband / preferred theoretical two party structure / coalition preference / political partisanship / party activism in election campaign / evaluation of government / policy Biesheuvel government / opinions on how M.P.'s should decide to vote / democratic attitude / opinions on some reforms of the political system / experiences in youth / opinions on welfare policy and government and political party / welfare policy / inflation / housing need / educational opportunities / pollution / aid to developing countries / government spending / income / norms regarding political power structure / opinions on government interference / liberal versus labour party in government / personal preferences / democratic attitude / political opinions on new government, its formation etc. / attitude to pillarization - compartmentalization / perception of social conflict groups and categories / misanthropy / opinion on political efficacy and on taking political actions / local and national level actually engaged in such actions / tolerance regarding activism / demonstrations, strikes etc. and political actions against this / attitude to law and order / role of UNO international conflict groups / opinions on UN and other foreign policy issues / internationalism / military and economic aid to other countries if attacked or in trouble / political socialization at school. Background variables: basic characteristics/ place of birth/ residence/ housing situation/ household characteristics/ occupation/employment/ income/capital assets/ education/ social class/ politics/ religion/ readership, mass media, and 'cultural' exposure.
The data- and documentation files of this dataset can be downloaded via the option Data Files.

The objectives of the 1996 election study were two-fold: to monitor the democratic process during New Zealand's transition from a plurality (first-past-the-post) electoral system to a proportional (MMP) system, and to gauge the attitudes, opinions and behaviours of electors. Two election surveys were conducted - one during the campaign and the other after the election. Electors surveyed in the pre-election phase answered questions on party affiliation, preferred Prime Minister, most important issue affecting voting choice, party and candidate the respondent was most likely to choose, coalition preferences, parties the respondent expected to form the next government, and the relative importance of party and electoral votes under MMP. Electors in the post-election phase were asked questions on their interest in politics, the type of communication (e.g. phone calls, letters) received from members of campaigning parties; previous and current party affiliation; the effectiveness of M.P.s; unity of the main political parties, the performance of the government; important election and social issues, the power of the vote and the need for a one-party government. Background variables included age, gender, marital status, occupation, income, collection of benefits, subjective class, religion, ethnic identity and occupation and partisanship of parents.

This poll is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President George W. Bush and his handling of the presidency. Opinions were also gathered on Vice President Dick Cheney, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Arizona Senator John McCain, and the United States Congress. Responding to questions about Bush, those polled gave their opinions on Bush's handling of foreign policy, the economy, the energy situation, and the environment. Respondents were asked if Bush could be trusted to keep his word, whether Bush had strong qualities of leadership, whether they had confidence in Bush's ability to deal wisely with an international crisis, and how much they thought Bush cared about the needs and problems of people like themselves, as well as Blacks. Opinions were gathered on whether Bush was seen as more liberal, moderate, or conservative, whether he was a different kind of Republican, whether he was working hard enough at the job of being president, and whether he had good judgment under pressure. Respondents were queried on whether Bush could negotiate effectively with world leaders and if those leaders had respect for him. The next set of questions dealt with the President and Congress. Opinions were gathered on both the Republican and Democratic parties, whether the close division between Republicans and Democrats had decreased partisanship by forcing the parties to work together, whether Bush would compromise with the Democrats to get things done and if the Democrats would do the same, if the Democrats or the president would have more influence over the direction of the country, whether respondents trusted the president or the Senate to make the right decisions about who should sit on the Supreme Court, and whether Bush's appointees would be more conservative than respondents would like. Another set of questions dealt with Social Security, including whether respondents thought individuals should be allowed to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes on their own and whether the government should be responsible to make up any losses as a result of personal investment. On the subject of Medicare, respondents were asked if reducing the cost of prescription drugs for the elderly mattered to them personally and if they would favor having Medicare pay for the costs of prescription drugs for all recipients or only for low-income recipients. Opinions were also solicited on whether respondents favored a law guaranteeing people in HMOs and other managed care plans the right to sue their plans for denying coverage. Respondents were asked if they favored raising the minimum wage and if there should be mandatory testing of students every year in public schools to determine the allocation of federal funds. With respect to the economy, respondents were asked how they rated the condition of the national economy, whether they thought it was getting better, whether the tax cuts would be good for the economy, and whether using a significant portion of the budget surplus to cut taxes would be the best thing to do or if it would be better to spend the money on programs such as Social Security and Medicare. On the subject of the environment and energy, questions were asked concerning whether continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost, whether producing energy or protecting the environment was more important, whether the environment must be protected even if it meant paying higher prices for electricity and gasoline, whether respondents thought that the energy shortages were real, and whether they thought energy companies decided among themselves what prices to charge for energy. Respondents were also asked whether they approved of the building of more nuclearpower plants to generate electricity and whether they would still feel that way if one were built in their own community, whether the government should increase production of petroleum, coal, and natural gas, or instead encourage people to conserve energy, whether there should be fewer regulations placed on oil and gas companies to make it easier for them to increase energy production, whether the oil industry had too much influence, and how they felt Bush and Cheney's ties to the oil industry would affect the administration's energy policy. Opinions of respondents were also elicited on the California power shortages, including whether the problems in California were a result of real power shortages or if power companies were claiming power shortages in order to charge consumers more for power, whether the federal government should help California with its energy problems, and whether respondents were in favor of price caps on power. On the issue of cars and fuel, respondents were asked what type of vehicle they had most recently purchased and whether they approved of the government requiring

This is the first of the series of National Election Studies. The study was designed as a two wave panel study: the first wave was carried out during the campaign, the two months preceding the election day, april 28, 1971. The second wave was conducted after the election. Data from these waves were combined into one SPSS-file. Exposure to mass-media / opinion on leadership / evaluation of local national government / most important local, national world problems / sense of political efficacy / political interest / attitude to democracy, political freedom of speech, egalitarian attitude / democratic attitude / perception of political party / position on government interference regarding inflation / pollution / opinions on voting decision-making / opinion on party policy and coalition formation coalition preferences / political partisanship / attitude to change and perception of parties / attitude to change voting, motivations / political participation / attitude to common market ( European Community ) / political satisfaction / perception of welfare and welfare policy by government and political parties / perception of educational possibilities / experienced and educational policy by government and political parties / housing need / inflation / pollution / attitude to aid to developing countries / perception of government spending / liberals versus labour in government versus own preferences / perception of social conflicts ( antagonism ) between groups, categories / misanthropy / attitude to pillarization - compartmentalization / relation politics, religion / sense of political efficacy / opinions on issues of reform of political system / internationalism / cosmopolitanism / evaluation of common market / perception of political situation in Holland, United States, Soviet Union ( civil rights and liberties ) / tendency to take political actions / perception of efficacy of certain actions / actually taken such action / tolerance regarding political activism / demonstrations / strikes and police action/attitude to law and order / perception and norms regarding political power / structure attitude to NATO and foreign policy, international cooperation, social problems. Background variables: basic characteristics/ place of birth/ residence/ housing situation/ household characteristics/ place of work/ occupation/employment/ income/capital assets/ education/ social class/ politics/ religion/ readership, mass media, and 'cultural' exposure/ organizational membership

Abstract: While citizens typically favor welfare policies, the electoral consequences of retrenching the welfare state are often minimal for parties implementing the reforms. Using two structural reforms in Finland as a natural quasi-experiment, we show that voters’ policy preferences shift in response to welfare reform measures initiated by their preferred parties. In December 2020, the Finnish center-left government enacted two reforms: one reducing social protection by removing entitlements for laid-off older workers to receive income-based unemployment benefits, and the other increasing social spending by extending the compulsory education age from 16 to 18. Using a two-wave panel survey conducted before and after the government actions, the results indicate that government voters became considerably more supportive of both reforms, despite their initial low support for welfare retrenchment and its contradiction with the established ideological profile of their parties. Moreover, the shift in voters’ policy preferences was substantively greater compared to their opposition counterparts and not affected by ideology and economic self-interest. Hence, voters’ policy preferences show dynamic adaptability to match the party line, thereby reducing grounds for holding the parties accountable.