ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AND ELECTORAL SUPPORT FOR SENATE INCUMBENTS

James L. Regens Michael J. Scicchitano

Few questions have fostered more interest than efforts to identify economic bases for voting. These attempts rest on the assumption that voters consider such linkages, at least implicitly, when making vote choices. However, findings about congressional elec- tions are mixed. This analysis, using objective indicators of voters' current economic conditions and a subjective measure of their prospective economic well-being, reveals that economic factors were re- lated only weakly to support for incumbents i n contested Senate elections from 1956 to 1978. Given increasing pessimism among the electorate about future economic conditions with a continuing lag in real growth, our research underscores the need for continued efforts to delineate conceptually and em- pirically the bases for economic-oriented voting.

Part of the folklore of American politics is that the economic policies of Democrats and Republicans have distinguishable effects at both the general macro-level of the economy and the micro-level advantage that the policies provide to those who comprise the party coalitions. Similarly, public choice explanations assume that voters rely, at least partially, upon economic considerations such as un- employment and inflation rates to develop their utility functions which define voting choices and subsequent electoral outcomes (Downs, 1957; Mueller, 1979). Some evidence exists that public support constrains economic policymaking (Hibbs, 1977; Tufte, 1978) and that the public may respond in a meaningful way to the economic content of political choices

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(Kramer, 1971 ; Nordhaus, 1975; Lindbeck, 1976; Kiewiet, 198 1). Other studies, however, suggest a less structured linkage between electoral behavior and macroeconomic policy (Keech, 1980) as well as "economic discontents and political judgments" (Kinder and Kiewiet, 1979, p. 523). Thus, few questions have fostered more interest than efforts to identify economic bases for voting. In part, this is because public policies affect the economy and, by implication, policy differences are contingent upon the values and attributes of those who, as members of Congress, are selected to perform policy-making roles.

Attempts to provide economic explanations rest on the assumption that voters consider such linkages, at least implicitly, i n making vote choices (Arcelus and Meltzer, 1975). Consequently, voters may sup- port incumbents if economic conditions appear to be favorable or vote for challengers if those conditions seem to be worsening. However, findings about the impact of past economic conditions on support for congressional incumbents are mixed. Tufte (1975) finds strong effects but other studies do not (Arcelus and Meltzer, 1975; Owens and Olsen, 1980). Such ambiguity about the impact of prior economic condi- tions on the major parties' relative success in congressional elections largely stems from reliance on aggregate data. Analysis a t the macro-level limits researchers not only to indirect but more importantly retrospective indicators of voters' preferences. But economic fluctuations are as much perceptual as they are based upon objective measures such as inflation rates, unemployment levels or changes in disposable income (Fiorina, 1978). Moreover, because voters tend to exhibit relatively high discount rates (Fair, 1978), incorporating retrospective as opposed to pro- spective estimates of economic conditions underesti- mates the impact of economic conditions on vote choicg (Kuklinski and West, 19811.l

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Just as economic voting may well be a prospec- tive act (Stigler, 1973), voting appears to be linked to the electoral context and seems to become a relevant consideration in determining vote choice as the salience of the office increases. For example, Kuklinski and West (1981) found that 1978 Senate elections but not House races were likely to be affected by economic judgments, and Kram,er (1971) discovered similar evidence of a significant relation- ship between indices of financial well-being and an incumbent President's share of the vote. Abramowitz (1980) noted that the electorate is more likely to express negative feelings toward Senate rather than House incumbents. This may derive from the fact that Senators' higher visibility fosters the view that, in conjunction wi th the President, they primarily are accountable for what happens because of government interventions in the economy. A s a result, our analysis focuses on the electorate's willingness to vote for Senate incumbents. If those choices are affected by economic considerations, then incumbents should benefit when voters anticipate improving con- ditions and lose support when the public perceives, worsening conditions.

Consequently, economic-based voting may be a function of not only the office being contested but also the temporal context of the election. The choice of which particular election year or series of years to study obviously could affect conclusions about the impact of economic conditions on Senate races. Furthermore, i f voters translate assessments of their economic situations into short-term decisions to throw out one or another set of rascals, then analyses should focus on those contests involving incumbents who have challengers. In light of these considera- tions, a meaningful delineation of economic voting in t h e context of Senate elections requires systematic, longitudinal analysis using survey data to examine the relationship between citizen's economic conditions, both current and anticipated, and their vote choice.

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Kramer (1983) argues that individual economic voting behavior is best investigated with aggregate - rather than individual-level data. In spite of the apparent success of the aggregate research, however, these studies have not been without controversy. The work of Arcelus and Meltzer (19751, for example, have disputed the macro-level findings. Wides (1976: 397) notes that "(t)he aggregate variables appear extremely sensitive to alterations in their operational definitions. The inclusion or exclusion of particular variables and the time period studied, the inherent difficulties of attempting to explain micro politics through macro economics have not been resolved." Clearly, macro and micro studies of economic voting should be viewed as complimentary not competing approaches each with inherent advantages and limita- tions.

I1

This research relies upon data collected by the biennial SRC-CPS National Election Studies con- ducted from 1956 through 1978.2 Although those surveys were not consistently designed as studies on congressional elections, all except the 1962 survey asked voters which candidate they had voted for if there was an election i n their state. Each also provides information about individuals' evaluations of prospective economic conditions. The question which provides data on anticipated economic conditions ,is worded in approximately this form:

"DO you think that in a year from now you will be better off financially, or worse off, or just about the same as now?"

In addition to voters' assessments of their prospective financial well-being in the coming year, we include

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two other economic indicators -income3 and employ- ment status4 -- as independent variables. We would expect, certeris paribus, that affluent voters would be more likely to support incumbents since those in- dividuals receive the greatest benefits from the existing economic structure and should be interested in maintaining it. Similarly, we assume that voters currently employed would be more inclined to favor incumbent senators while t h e unemployed or those otherwise not in the labor force would be less supportive to the extent they associate incumbents with their personal economic situation. Finally, although there are indications that party indentifica- tion has become less dominant in determining voter preferences in congressional elections (Krostroski, 1973; Mann and Wolfinger, 1980, p. 620), given the relatively distinct positions of the Democratic and Republican parties on a number of economic issues, we include a d u m m y measure of the congruence of partisan identification between the respondent and incumbent as an independent variable. This allows us to control for the degree to which partisan attach- ments may affect vote choice.

Before turning to our findings, it is necessary to address the issue of whether SRC-CPS data should be used for research on Senate elections. The general problem of overreporting the vote that plagues SRC- CPS studies (Traugott and Katosh, 1979) combined with sampling procedures which occasionally concen- trate respondents in only a f e w states (Mann and Wolfinger, 1980) raise the question of the appropri- ateness of using these data. In our analysis, only responses obtained from voters in states in which an incumbent senator had a contested general election were used. For the few occasions in which a state chose two senators in t h e same general election, all respondents from that state were excluded since it was impossible to determine for which race the re- spondents provided information. Fortunately, in

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spite of possible turnout discrepancies and sampling problems, regression analysis of each election show that respondents' self-reported vote choice derived from the SRC-CPS surveys is a reasonable predictor of the actual percentage of the two-party vote received by incumbents facing a major party chal- lenger in the general election (XR2 = ,451. Moreover, no significant differences in the R2 values of the equations for each year resulted when the states were grouped into categories reflecting the distribution of respondents among them.5 The surveys also include a substantial percentage of the states in which incum- bents faced contested races ( X = 63.7%). As a result, because we focus on examining continuity or change in the extent to which economic conditions affect electoral support for Senate incumbents rather than specific races, we believe that the data are appropri- ate for our research.

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A clear shift in self-perceived, prospective economic conditions occurred from 1956 to 1978 among voters in contested Senate elections involving incumbents. The most noticeable aspect was a substantial increase in voters who envisioned a worse economic future with a corresponding sharp decline among those anticipating an enhanced situation. Fig- ure 1 indicates that the difference can best be demonstrated by dividing the 11 elections into two periods (1956-1968 and 1970-1978). A consistent increase in economic pessimism emerges, interrupted only briefly by the 1976 elections. At the same time, the percentage assuming their economic situation would not fluctuate remained relatively stable.

Table 1 presents estimates of the extent to which voting for Senate incumbents is a function of variation in economic measures and partisan identi- fication.6 Contrary to expectation, examination of

FIGURE I. Evoluatiom d hcpactiva Ganomic hnditionr, l956-1978.

the regression equations across the series of elections reveals that the economic variables have limited utility for explaining vote choices. Perceptions of future economic conditions on voting for Senate incumbents were statistically significant only for the 1966, 1968, and 1978 elections. Similarly, income differentials did not emerge as consistently important factors. Employment status similarly appears to'have had a negligible impact on past decisions to vote for the incumbent. Thus, just as subjective economic considerations fail to exert a systematic influence, more objective indicators appear to be related only weakly to vote choices in contested Senate elections. Finally, although partisanship declined as a cue (see also Kostroski, 19731, it continued to exert a strong influence. In fact, shared partisan identification between the voter and his/her Senator was the single best predictor of vote choice from 1956 to 1978.

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Although economic considerations do not appear to have been a major factor influencing voters' willingness to support Senate incumbents in the past, increasing pessimism among the electorate about prospective economic conditions combined with a continuing lag in real growth may alter that pattern. Moreover, while acknowledging that little, i f any, evidence of economic voting exists in contested Senate incumbent elections does not mean that economic considerations are necessarily irrelevant. Instead, our findings indicate that economics and politics are separate domains potentially linked, in the context of the public's electoral decision-making, through the mechanism of partisan identification. Thus, as Kuklinski and West (1981, p. 438) note "voters should at least become more sensitized to the connection between their own economic situations and the candidate." Our own analysis underscores the need for continued effort to delineate conceptually and empirically the bases for economic-oriented voting.

lFor a summary discussion of the potential problem of relying on retrospective indicators, whether aggregate or individual-level, to predict vote choices in congressional elections see Kuklinski and West (1981, p. 437).

2Portions of the data used were made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research and originally were collected by the Center for Political Studies of the University of Michigan. Neither the ICPSR nor the CPS have any responsibility for our analyses or interpretations. Our analysis excludes 1962 because data for the dependent variable, Senate vote, were not collected that year.

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3Because it is necessary to control for the effect of inflation, w e grouped respondents' esti- mated gross annual income into three categories: (1) Low - more than 1 standard deviation below the X; (2) Medium - within + 1 standard deviation of the X; and (3) High -- more than 1 standard deviation above the X. From this w e derive two dummy income variables (high and low) which are employed in analysis. This indirect approach to controlling for inflation is necessary since the original SRC-CPS measure is ordinal (thereby precluding conversion to constant dollars) and does not employ the same categories across the 11 surveys (an implicit adjust- ment).

4Employment status was coded as a dichoto- mous (i.e., d u m m y ) variable on the basis of whether respondents currently were employed in the labor force at the time of the election.

5T0 test for the effects of the unequal distri- bution of the respondents among the states we grouped the states into three categories: (1) more than 1 standard deviation below the Xn; (2) + 1 standard deviation of the Xn; and (3) more than 1 standard deviation above the X n for each year.

6Since we cannot assume normality in the distribution of the variables employed, generalized least squares (GLS) provides an appropriate statistical technique to test the linkage between economic conditions and vote choice (Wonnacott and Wonna- cott, 1970, pp. 318-335; Johnston, 1972, pp. 208-241). Using GLS, i f the error term has a multivariate normal distribution, the B's can be interpreted as maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs). Even without the normality cissumption, according to Gauss Markov Theorem, the R 's are the best linear unbiased esti- mators. A n alternative approach would be to use logit or probit procedures. While those techniques

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are more efficient estimators than regression, the substantive differences i n results are minimal (Good- man, 1976) so we have chosen the more readily interpretable technique.

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