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Sociotropic Politics: The American Case

Donald R. Kinder; D. Roderick Kiewiet

British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 11, No. 2. (Apr., 1981), pp. 129-161.

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B.J.Po1.S. r r , rzg-161Printed in Grecrt Britcrin

Sociotropic Politics: The American CaseD O N A L D R . K I N D E R AND D . R O D E R I C K K I E W I E T *Am erican elections depen d substan tially on th e vitality of the national e conom y.Prosperity benefits candidates for the House of Representatives from theincumbent party (defined as the party that controls the presidency at the timeof the election), whereas economic do w ntur ns enh ance the electoral fortunes ofopposition candidates. ' Short-term fluctuations in economic conditions alsoapp ear to affect the electorate's presidential choice,' as well as the level of publicapproval conferred upon the president during his term." By this evidence, thepolitical consequences of macroeconomic conditions are both pervasive andpowerful. But just how d o citizens know whether the incum bent party hassucceeded or failed? W ha t kind s of econom ic evidence do people weigh in theirpolitical appraisals? The purpose of our paper is to examine two contrastingdepictions of individual citizens - one em phasizing the political significance ofcitizens' own econom ic predica me nts, the other stressing the political im porta nce

* Departments of Political Science and Psychology, Yale University. and Division of theHumanities and Social Sciences. California Institute of Technology. Data for this paper wereprovided by the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research, University of Michigan. TheCon sortium of course bears no responsibili ty for ou r interpretations or conclusions. A preliminaryversion of this paper was delivered at the annual meeting of the American Political ScienceAssociation, New Y ork . 1978. W e would like to than k the journal's two ano nym ous referees. Jac kCitrin, Faye Crosby, Robert Jervis, Richard Merelman, David Sears, Steven Weatherford, andparticularly Janet Weiss for their helpful comments and criticisms.

' Gerald H . Kramer. 'Shor t -Term Fluctuat ions in U.S. Vot ing Behavior , 1896 1964 ' . AmericanPolilical Science Review. L X V (197 I ) , I 3 1-43 ;Gerald H . Kramer and Susan Lepper, 'CongressionalElections', in William 0 . Aydelotte. ed.. Dimensions of Qua ntilative Research in Hislory (Princeton,N .J .: Princeton University Press. 1972); Susan Lep per, 'Vo ting B ehavior and Aggregate PolicyTargets ' . Puhlic Choice. XVII I (1974). 67-81; Edward R. Tufte. 'Determ inants of the Outcomes ofMidterm Congressional Elections'. American Political Science Review. LXIX (1975). 812-26. an dPolitical C ontrol o f th e Economy (Princeton . N.J.: Prince ton University Press. 1978); Ho wa rd S.Bloom and H. D ouglas Price. 'Vo ter Response to Short -R un Economic Con ditions. The AsymmetricEffect of Prosperity and Recession'. American Political Science Review, L X I X (1975). 124c+54;R. P. Y. Li. 'Public Policy and Short-Term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior: A Reform ulationand Expansion ' , Political Methodology, 111 (1976). 49-70.Alan H. Meltzer and Mark Vellrath, 'The Effects of Economic Policies on Votes for thePresidency: Some Evidence from Recent Elections' , Journal of Law and Economics, XVIII (1975).781-98; Ray C . Fair, 'T he Effects of Econom ic Events on Votes for President ' . Review ofEconomicsand Stalislics. L X (19 78) . 159-73; T ufte. Polilical Control of the Economy.

"run0 Frey an d Friedrich Schneid er, 'An Empirical Study of Politico-E conom ic Interactions inthe United States', Review of Economics and Statistics. L X (1978). 174-83; Samuel Kernell.'Explaining Presidential Popularity ' , Ame rican Politico1 Science R eview, LXXII (1978) . 50622 ;Kristen M onroe, 'Econo mic Influences on Presidential Popularity '. Puhlic Opinion Quarterly, X L I I(1978). 360-9. Fo r com parative results fo r the Fre nch chief executive see Michael Lewis-Beck,'Economic Conditions and Executive Popularity: The French Experience' . American Journal ofPolitical Science, xx lv (1980). 30 62 3 .

0007-1234,81,2 828-27 70 $02 oo ( 198 I Pressa m b r ~ d g e n ~ v e r s ~ t y

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I30 K I N D E R A N D K I E W I E Tof citizens' assessments of the nation's economic predicament - that mightunderlie the aggregate entwining of economics and politics. Ours is an inquiryinto the political economy of individual citizens.Strictly speaking, the aggregate results are of course compatible with anynumber of propositions about individuals. Yet in setting up their analysis andin interpreting their results, aggregate-data analysts have gravitated naturallyto one characterization of the individual voting act - to pocketbook voting."nreaching political preferences, pocketbook voters are swayed most of all by theimmediate and tangible circumstances of their private lives. Citizens preoccupiedwith their pocketbooks support candidates and parties that have advanced theirown economic interests and oppose candidates and parties that appear tothreaten them. From this angle, it is easy to see why the party in power stumblesduring recessions. During economic downturns, more voters encounterincreasingly serious economic difficulties in their own lives; they then march tothe polls to turn the rascals out.The pocketbook prediction draws partly on common sense for its widespreadappeal : personal experiences - personal economic experiences in particular - arecompelling in ways that vicarious experiences cannot be. Moreover, a politicalcalculus based on personal experience substantially reduces the costs that arenormally incurred by becoming informed about the political world. Popkin andhis colleagues, in expounding their 'investment voter' theory, make precisely thispoint: 'Usable political information is acquired in the process of makingindividual economic decisions: housewives learn about inflation of retail prices;homebuyers find out the trends in mortgage loan interests rates, and owners ofstocks follow the Dow-Jones average^.'^ Pocketbook politics requires little inthe way of political expertise. Knowing who the incumbents are, where thepolling place is located, and a few other details are all that is needed. Given theuneven and intermittent attention the American public pays to politics, theminimal informational demands placed upon voters by pocketbook politicscontributes materially to its attractiveness.

So it should come as no surprise that pocketbook-like assumptions have longinformed political analysis and continue to do so. Several distinguished examplescan make this point. Kramer's formative aggregate study of the electoralconsequences of macroeconomic performance was inspired by Downs's ration-ality axiom that 'each citizen casts his vote for the party he believes will providehim with more benefits than any ~ t h e r ' . ~nd to calculate such expectations,voters need only review their own economic circumstances: 'Rational men arenot interested in policies per se but in their own utility incomes. If their present"ee, for example, Bloom and Price, 'Voter R esponse to Short-R un Economic Con ditions' , and

Tufte, Political Control of the Economy.Samuel Popkin, Jo hn W . Gorman, Charles Phillips and Jeffrey A. Smith, 'Comment: WhatHave You Done for Me Lately? Toward an Investment Theory of Voting ' , American PoliticalScience Review, L X X (1976), 779-805, p. 788.Kramer , 'Short-Term Fluctuat ions ' ; A nthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democra cy (NewYork : Harper , 195 7)~ . 36.

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Sociotropic Politics: T he American Case 131utility incom es are very low in their o wn eyes, they m ay believe that alm ost an ycha nge likely to be m ade will raise their incom es. In this case, it is ration al forthem to vote against the incum bents, i.e., for change in general."A similar theme is sounded by the authors of The American Voter in theirdiscussion of the psychological underpinnings of public opinion . Policy prefer-ences, they claimed, often reflect little more than 'primitive self-intere~t'.~Working-class citizens generally support social welfare policies, putativelybecause the benefits of such programs accrue to them, while the middle class,operating on the same grounds of self-interest, opposes them. That the publicis customarily indifferent to the details of policy is then ascribed to theremoteness of mos t policies to citizens' private lives. W hen policies intrud e u ponprivate life - when they become 'doorstep issues' - then interest and attentione ~ c a l a t e s . ~In their reappraisal of the Akerican voter, Nie and Anderson neverthelesspreserve the self-interest theme. Attempting to explain the apparent increasesin consistency of policy beliefs shown by the American public in the middle1960s, they point to 'th e chan ging natu re of politics from the 1950s to the 1970san d, as a result of these changes, the growing sense on the p art of the mass publicthat politics has a significant effect on their lives.'"'As a final illustration, the pock etbook assum ption also surfaced in the 'en dof ideology' argument, common some years ago, that continued prosperitywould dampen ideological conflict and produce a consensual basis for liberaldemocracy. As L aPa lom bara characterized this argum ent, citizens of W esterndemocracies, swept away by ' a n avalanche of washing m achines, autom obiles,and television sets', would come to feel only profound affection for theirgovernments." Add itional examples abo und , but the general point should beevident. Pocketbook politics, in the guise of economic self-interest, narrowlydefined, figures heavily - an d rath er uncritically in social science think ingab ou t politics.

' D ow ns , An Economic Th eory of Democracy, p. 42. T o be sure, Dow ns's fo rmulation doe s permitvoters to take into account considerat ions other than thei r own personal economic ci rcumstances:'I t is possible for a citizen to receive utility from e vents that a re only remotely co nne cted to his ow nmaterial in co m e.. .The re can be n o simple identification of ac ting for one's greatest benefit' withselfishness in the narrow sense because self-denying charity is often a great source of benefits tooneself. Thu s ou r model leaves no room for altruism In spite of i ts basic reliance upon the self-interestaxiom' (p. 37). Th us ou r emp~ rical robings of the pocketbook predictions should not be equatedin any simple way with testing Downs's an aly s~ s f voter rationali ty. T he pocketbo ok hypothesisshould be construed rather as an expression of a central theme of Downs's analysis.

"ngus Ca mp be ll, Philip E. Converse, Warre n E. Miller and Don ald E. Stokes, The AmericanVoter (New York: Wiley, 1960), p. 205.Philip E. Converse, 'Public Opinion and Voting Behavior' , in Fred I. Greenstein and NelsonW. Polsby, eds. , Handbook of Political Sclence, Vol. VI (Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1975).P. 98.

l o Norman Nie and Krist i Andersen, 'Mass Bel~efSystems Revisited: Poli t ical Change andAtt itude S t ructure ' . Journal of Politics, x x x v ~(1974), 5 4 ~ 1 .. 571.'' Joseph La Palom bara, 'Decl ine of Ideology. A Dissent and Interpretat ion ' , American PoliticalScience Review, LX (196 6). 5-16, p. 9.

j - 2

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That the pocketbook assumption is popular does not make it true. Analtern ative t o it is wh at we shall call sociotropic prediction." In reaching politicalpreferences, the prototypic sociotropic voter is influenced most of all by thenation's economic condition. Purely sociotropic citizens vote according to thecountry's pocke tbook, no t their ow n. Citizens moved by soc iotropic inform ationsupport candidates that appear to have furthered the nation's economicwell-being and oppo se candida tes and parties th at seem to threaten it. Thu s theparty in power s uffers at the polls du ring h ard times because vo ters act on theirnegative assessments of national economic conditions - quite apart from thetrials and tribulations of their own economic lives.It m ay seem a t first that a sociotropic politics places unrealistic information aldemands upon voters, especially in contrast to pocketbook politics. We thinknot, however. It is not necessary forsociotropicv oters to un der take a sophisticatedanalysis of the econom y, o r to entertain subjective probabilities of the conse-quences of economic policies pursued by rival governing team s. R athe r, votersmu st only develop rough ev aluations of national economic conditions, and thencredit or blame the incumbent party accordingly.13One final point is needed by way of introduction. The distinction betweenpock etbook and sociotropic politics is not equivalent to the distinction betweena self-interested and an altruistic politics. To be sure, it is difficult to imaginea motive other than concern for self-interest driving the preferences of voterswh o choose between alterna tive candida tes on the basis of their own econom iccircumstances. The motives tha t underlie sociotropic voting, on the o ther ha nd,are n ot so transpa rent. Sociotropic voting may proceed out of altruistic concernfor the well-being of all Americans. Alternatively, sociotropic voting may betotally self-interested. Prototyp ic so ciotropic voters may co nstrue th e incum bentadministration's handling of the economy as a public good, and thus useinformation abo ut the national economic condition as a superior indicator ofthe incumbent's ability to pro m ote (eventually) their own economic welfare - andonly incidentally that of fellow citizens as well. What evidence is currentlyavailable can no t convincingly distinguish between these two possibilities. I n themeantime, differences between the po cketboo k and sociotropic characterizationsof citizen politics should be regarded not as one of motivation, but as one ofinformation. Pock etbook voting reflects the circumstances and predicaments ofpersonal economic life; sociotropic voting reflects the circumstances andpredicaments of national economic life.This difference carries implications for political analysis construed morebroadly. As we have tried to suggest, the pocketbook assumption is well-

l 2 This term was used originally in Paul E. Meehl ' s 'The Self ish Voter Paradox and theThrown-Away Vote Argument ' , American Political Science Review, LXXI ( 1977) ~I 1-30.

'-0th the poc ketb ook and sociotropic predictions - at least as we have characterized them -describe voters who react retrospectively. The concept of retrospective voting has a distinguishedheritage - see Dow ns, An Economic Theory, and V. 0.K ey , The Responsible Electorate (Cambridge,Mass: Belknap, 1966). For a recent and extensive treatment of retrospective voting see Morris P.Fior ina, Retrospective Voting in American National Elections (New Haven, Co nn. ; Yale Universi tyPress, forthcom ing).

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Sociotropic Politics: The American Case I 33entrenched in contemporary social science thinking. The sociotropic voterhypothesis therefore represents a challenge to conventional thinking. Replace-ment of pocketbook politics with a sociotropic politics could have widespreadramifications, forcing a reappraisal of our understanding of citizen rationality,of elections as devices of democratic control, and more generally of the linkbetween citizens and their governments. We shall say more on each of thesepoints later.

T H E L I M I T A T I O N S O F P R I O R R E S E A R C HPerhaps because of its manifest plausibility, the pocketbook prediction hasseldom been sub jected to pointed emp irical testing. Th e relevant evidence come sfrom a han dful of recent studies, all draw ing on the election surveys con duc tedby Michigan's Center for Political Studies (formerly the Survey ResearchCenter). The empirical verdict for congressional elections is clear: voting forCong ress (from 1956 to 1976) was influenced only faintly by personal econom icgrievances. Voters unha ppy with change in their own financial circumstances o rthose who had recently encountered employment difficulties, were not therebymoved to support opposition party candidates.14 Evidence in favour of thisproposition is somewhat more positive, although erratically so, for presidentialvoting.15

Th us econom ic conditions (in the aggregate) do affect electoral outcom es (alsoin th e aggregate), but the link between the two is evidently n ot supplied in anyimportant way by economic deprivations and disappointments suffered inpriva te life. Alth oug h this conclusion fits the available evidence, it is pre m atu re:the literature is limited in several important respects. In the first place, researchthat tests the pocketboo k prediction has so far been dominated by the Down sianhypothesis that the citizens whose own econom ic fortun es have dete riorate dwill vote for change (i.e., against incum bent party candidates). But personaleconomic discontents can take many forms, and precisely how citizens definetheir own econom ic problems m ay shap e their political repercussions. Considercitizen Smith, for example, whose financial status is deteriorating. The simpleversion of the pocke tboo k hypothesis predicts tha t Sm ith will be inclined therebyto vote for the opposition party. But if Smith's economic unhappiness is tracedto fears of being laid off, and if Sm ith believes the D em ocra ts to be particularly" Mikal Ben-Gera Logan, 'Short -Term Economic Changes and Individual Vot ing Behavior '

(manuscript , Yale University. 1977). Morris P. Fiorina, 'Economic Retrospective Voting inAmerican Elections: A Micro-Analysis' . American Journal ofPolit ica 1 Science, X X I I (197 8), 426-43;Donald R . Kinder and D. Roderick Kiewiet, 'Economic Discontent and Polit ical Behavior: TheRole of Personal Grievances and Collective Economic Judgments in Congressional Voting' ,Americzn Journal of Political Science, X X I I I (197 9), 495-527; Ricardo Klorm an, 'Trends in PersonalFinances and the V ote '. Public Opinion Quarterly, XL I I I (1978), 31-48." Campbel l et ul.. The American V oter , pp. 4 I 6-2 I ; Fiorina, 'Econom ic Retrospective V ot ing ' ;Klorm an, 'Trends in Personal Finances ' ; Tufte. Poli ti ca l C on ~r o l f t he Eco nomy; Jeffrey W .Wides,' Self-perceived Econom ic Change and Polit ical Orienta tions : A Preliminary Explo ration ' , AmericanPolit ics Quarterly, rv (19 76). 395-412.

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134 KINDER AND KIEWIET

concerned with problems of unemployment, then Smith may be led, ceterisparibus, to vote Democratic. By the same logic, if Smith's complaints are dueto being forced to take a second job to keep up with inflation, then Smith'seconomic discontent might lead to a Republican vote. In short. pocketbookvoting may be policy-oriented instead of incumbency-oriented, and hence goundetected in analysis that tests only the Downsian hypothesis.16A second limitation of the literature is its reliance on cross-sectional analysis.17Although personal economic grievances are weakly correlated with politicalpreferences when they are assessed simultaneously, they might be linkeddynamically. A voter who supported a Republican congressional candidate in1974,for instance, and whose economic circumstances then worsened, might endup voting for a Democratic candidate two years later, all in accordance withthe pocketbook voter hypothesis. Such shifts could be systematic and politicallyimportant, but show up as mere traces in cross-sectional analysis.ls

The argument that voting in response to economic issues might be policy-oriented was madeby George J. Stigler in his 'General Economic Conditions and National Elections', AmericanEconomic Review, LxIIr (1973). 6*7 Furthermore, several studies of Western democracies suggestthat macroeconomic policy is a function of the extent to which the executive branch has beencontrolled by parties of the Left as against parties of the Right. In particular, according to DouglasHibbs, long periods of control by right-wing parties are associated with higher rates of unemploy-ment - see his 'Political Parties and Macro-Economic Policy', American Politicul Science Review,LXXI(1977)~467-87.Control by left-wing parties, in contrast, is associated with larger and morerapidly growing public sectors, and with downwardly redistributive tax systems- see DavidCameron's 'Politics, Public Policy, and Economic Inequality: A Comparative Analysis', paperdelivered at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago 1976,and'The Expansion of the Public Economy: A Comparative Analysis', American Political ScienceReview, LXXII(1978), 243-61. o act in a policy-oriented fashion voters would need to haveregistered these differences. It should be noted, however, that as regards the issues of inflation andunemployment, policy-oriented voting doesnot require voters to believe in the existence of a trade-offbetween these two maladies. It only requires that they perceive differences between the amountof effort and/or skill the two parties are able to apply against whichever of the two problems theyfind especially troublesome.

l5 An exception is M. Stephen Weatherford's 'Economic Conditions and Electoral Outcomes:Class Differences in the Political Response to Recession', American Journal of Political Science, XXII(1978). y 17-38, which utilizes the Center for Political Studies' 1956-60panel study.lRThis is due to the fact that previous studies have all, in one way or another, controlled forparty identification. It could be that considerations which prompt individuals to change their votesmight also prompt them to change their avowed partisanship; by controlling for partisanship theimpact of such considerations, including unfavourable economic conditions, would fail to bedetected. There is, after all, considerable evidence indicating that party identification is susceptibleto just this sort of change - see, for example, Richard A. Brody, 'Stability and Change in PartyIdentification: Presidential to Off-Year', paper delivered at the annual meeting of the AmericanPolitical Science Association, Washington, 1977;W. Phillips Shively, 'Information Costs and thePartisan Life Cycle', paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Political Science

Association, Washington, 1977;Benjamin I. Page and Calvin Jones, 'Reciprocal Effects of PolicyPreferences, Party Loyalties, and thevote' , Americun PoliticulScience Review, LXXIII(IY~Y),071-89. Most analyses to date have been quite sensitive to this issue, but it is certainly prudent to probemore deeply for potential problems. For this reason, the analyses in this paper will examine bothchanges in voting and changes in partisanship, as later discussion will reveal.

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Sociotropic Politics: Th e American C ase 135These limitations suggest that the pocketbook prediction may have beenshort-changed; and tha t supp ort in its favour could be dem onstrated if only theappropriate evidence could be secured. Part of our purpose here is to providea f.lirer and more complete test of pocketb ook politics.lg'The sociotropic hyp othesis has so far attracted less att en tio n than thepoi:ketbook voter, althou gh th e initial findings are mo re enc our agin g. In o uraniilysis congressiona l voting did indeed derive par tly fro m citizens' soc iotro picjuc g e m e n k Z 0 uch judgements w ere of three types: assessments of recent trendsin general business conditions; evaluations of how well the government wasmanaging economic problems ( 'government performance ') ; and judgementsabout which party was the more competent in economic matters ( 'partycolnpetence'). So defined, sociotropic judgements were consistently and

occ:aiionally powerfully related to congressional voting - even with stringentc o ~ ~ tr o l sn partisanship.Evidence o n sociotropic v oting is enc oura ging , then, b ut h ardly definitive. Athird a nd m ore general limitation of this literature - which applies with som ewh atgreater force to the sociotropic hy pothesis but is relevant to pock etbook votingas well - is simply tha t we d o not k now very mu ch. Wh at we do kn ow is confinedlargely t o research on congressional voting. A second m ajor p urpose here is toexl.end the assessment of the pocke tboo k a nd sociotropic predictions beyond thecongressional context, an d in so doing, to push further th e debate between thesetwo conceptions of the American voter.21lYt should b e noted , however, that several recent investigations into a num ber o f different

dom ains have also foun d persona l concerns and disco ntents of various kinds have negligible politicalcorlsequences. See, amo ng o thers, Douglas S. Ga tlin, Michael W . Gile, and Everett F . Cataldo ,'Policy Support W ithin a Target Gr ou p: T he Case of School Desegregation ', American PoliticalSc ~en ce eview',Lxxlr (1978), 985-95; Don ald R. Kind er and David 0 . Sears, 'Prejudice a nd Politics:Sylnbolic Racism versus Racial Threats to the Good Life ' , Journal of Personality and SocialPsj!chology, for thcoming; Richard Lau, Thad Brown, and David 0. Sears, 'Self-Interest andC i ~ i l i a n s 'Attitudes Toward Vietnam', Public Opinion Quarterly, xLlr (1978), 464-83; David 0 .Sears. Carl P. Hensler, and Leslie K . Speer, " 'Whites" Opposition to "Busing": Self-Interest orSy~nbol ic ac i sm? ' , American Political Science Review, LxxIrr (1979), 369-84; David 0 . Sears andDon ald R. Kinder, 'Racial T ension and V oting in Los Angeles ', in W . 2.Hirsch, ed., Los Angeles:Vitrhility and Pr osp ects for Metropolitan Leadership (New Yor k: Praeger, 1971); David 0 . Sears ,To m R. Tyler, Jack C. Citrin, and Don ald R. Kinder, 'Political System Sup port an d PublicResponses to the Energy Crisis ' , American Journal of Political Science, XXII (1978), 5&82; David0. Sears, Richard Lau, Tom R . Tyler and Ha rris M . Allen, Jr ., 'Self-Interest Versus SymbolicP o itics in Policy Attitudes an d Presidential V oting', American Political Science Review, Lxxrv (1980),1351-5 . Kinder and Kiewiet, 'Economic Discontent and Political Behavior ' .

L L Althou gh ou r attentio n will be confined to pocketboo k and sociotropic conceptions of politics,these two certainly do not exhaust the possibilit ies. For example, one alternative perspectiveemJh asizes social grou p identification, essentially arguing tha t muc h of A merican politics is carriedon at a level intermediate between pocketbook and sociotropic interests. This is a venerable idea;we are hap py to notice indications of its revival; see, for example, Arthu r Miller, Patricia Gurin .ant1 Gerald Gurin, 'Electoral Implications of Group Identification and Consciousness: TheRe~ntroduction f a Concept ' , paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American PoliticalSci~:nceAssociation,New York , 1978 ;Laurie Rhodebec k, ' Group-Based Politics '(P h.D. dissertation,D e ~ a rt m e n t f Political Science, Yale University, 1980).

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O V E R V I E WOur analysis comes in three parts. The first section reopens the question of thepossible link between personal economic grievances and congressional voting.It first pursues a refinement of the simple pocketbook hypothesis, which takesinto account how citizens define their personal economic problems. This analysisdraws upon an open-ended question included in the 1972, 1974 and 1976 CPSNational Election Surveys that asked respondents to name their most importantpersonal problems. To maintain the distinction between personal grievances andsociotropic judgements, we also examine a parallel question that askedrespondents to indicate the most serious national problems. Our questions hereare: does inflation-related distress produce votes for Republican congressionalcandidates? Does unemployment-related discontent become translated intosupport for the Democrats? And most important for the contrast betweenpocketbook and sociotropic voting, is it citizens' definitions of their owneconomic problems, or their conceptions of economic problems confronting thenation, that are associated with their votes for Congress?The second part of the re-examination of congressional voting then takes upseveral dynamic possibilities, in a pair of analyses made possible by theavailability of the 1972-74-76 CPS panel study. Here we ask: do personaleconomic interests produce shifts in congressional voting over time?The second and third sections of the analysis then expand the comparativeinvestigation ofthe pocketbook and sociotropicpredictions beyondcongressionalvoting, as promised. We again draw principally on the 1972, 1974 and 1976National Election Surveys, largely because they include a uniquely rich com-plement of measures of both personal grievances and sociotropic judgements.Our questions here are: to what extent is presidential voting responsive to per-sonal economic interests? To what extent to sociotropic interests? And, in thefinal section, do pocketbook economic interests affect partisanship - especiallythe intensity of partisanship? To what extent is partisanship affected by socio-tropic economic judgements?CONGRESS IONAL VOTING A N D P E R S O NA L E C O N O M I C GRIEVANCES:R E O P E N I N G THE C A S EA first step in testing the refined version of the pocketbook prediction is simplyto examine what sorts of things citizens mention when asked about their ownproblems. This first step is more arduous than might appear, however, becausethe coding scheme developed by CPS for the personal problem question turnedout to be unsuitable for our purposes.22 t was therefore necessary first to develop

2 2 One of the major problems was that in 1976 complaints about unemployment were lumpedtogether with all other job-related references, which ranged from despising the public (mentionedquite often by sales clerks) to having to work too many hours. Only about half of the referencesin the employment related category were about unemployment. It also turned out that the manycomplaints in 1976 about taxes were coded a s 'other or less specific economic woes'. Furthermore,the 1972-74 codes often contained a hodge-podge of various and sundry responses. One category,

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Sociotropic Politics: The American Case I 37a new coding scheme for the personal problem question (although, fortunately,not for responses to the national problem question), and then to return to theoriginal protocols. The results of such efforts are displayed in Table I .Not surprisi~lgly, conomic concerns figured prominently in both personal andnational life during the period 1972-76. As regardspersonal economic problemsin particular, inflation was named most often on each of the three occasions (by19 per cent in 1972; 37 per cent in 1974; and 28 per cent in 1976). This categoryincluded references both to high prices and to rising prices. Technically inflationmeans a rising general price level, of course, not high prices. But as manyeconomists have suspected, the public evidently does not differentiate muchbetween the two. Respondents appeared to use the terms interchangeably:complaints such as 'high food prices - inflation in general' and 'the high costof living - rising heating costs' were common. The inflation category alsoincluded references to declining real income, such as complaints about erodingpurchasing power, the failure of wages to keep pace with prices, and so forth.(Such references made up a relatively small share of all inflation responses,roughly one-fifth in each of the National Election Surveys.)

Unemployment, in contrast, was mentioned as a personal problem byrelatively few CPS respondents. The unemployment category included peoplewho complained that they or someone close to them were laid off, unable to findwork, unable to work as many hours as they would like, or worried by the threatof unemployment. As shown in Table I , such complaints were expressed by onlya handful of respondents - roughly 3 or 4 per cent in each survey.

How citizens defined national problems during this period is also reported inTable I . According to the CPS sample, the principal problem facing the countryin 1972 was Vietnam, with crime and disorder running a close second. Just twoyears later, however, with peace declared and the central cities comparativelyquiet, these two problems virtually disappeared. Their place in the collectivepsyche was more than taken up by inflation. With prices soaring in the fall of1974, inflation emerged as the predominant national problem - completelyovershadowing any worries the public expressed about corruption in government.The dominance of economic problems in the public's assessment of the nationcontinued into 1976, with concern about unemployment slightly outstrippinginflation-related worries.By these descriptive data, post-materialism appears as far away as ever. Thataside, the essential question here I S whether there are systematic relationshipsbetween the economic problems people name - personal and national - andfor example. contained references to inflation, taxes, governmental waste, and the cost of college.We obviously needed to disaggregate these responses.

The staff at CPS was extremely accommodating and helped make the task of recoding theinterviews much less arduous than it might have been. We would like to thank Warren Miller forhis approval o f the project. and Ann Robinson, Alice Hayes and Maria Sanchez for their valuableassistance. A more detailed analysis of the political consequences of personal economic problemsand perceptions of national economic pro ble n~s ppears in D. Roderick Kiewiet's 'Policy-OrientedVoting in Response to Economic Issues', American Polit ical Science Re r i e ~ v .forthcoming. 1981.

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Sociotropic Politics: Th e American Case 139their political preferences - in this case, their support for congressional cand-idates. The following analysis will incorporate additional measures of bothpersonal econom ic cond itions and sociotropic economic judgements that haveproved useful in prior research. On the pocketb ook side, the personal econom icproblems that people name are supplemented by a pair of measures: one thattaps respondents' evaluations of recent trends in their familial economiccircumstances ('Dissatisfaction with income'); the other that summarizes thefamily's recent unemployment experiences ('Unemployment experience^').^^(These measu res an d those t ha t follow a re defined in detail in the Appen dix, seep . I 59.) Th e sociotropic side is represented by fo ur kinds ofm easu res. In a dditio nto the problems tha t people believe are facing the coun try, the expanded analysisincludes: respondents' assessme nts of recent trend s in general business con dition s('Business conditions'); their evaluations of how well the government isman aging economic problems ('Governm ent perform ance'); and their judge-ments about which party is the more competent in economic matters ('Partycompetence ').The reader may wonder at this point about the relationship betweenpocke tbook disconten ts and sociotropicjud gem ents. Are assessments of nationaleconomic conditions an ything more than generalization of the economic trialsand tribulations of private life? They certainly a re. Conn ections between the twoare in fact surprisingly tenuous. Having been recently laid off or thinking thatthings are deteriorating at h om e have little to do w ith assessments of the nationalecono my, how well it is being ma naged , or which party might d o a better job.Th e median Pearson c orrelation across the two categories - personal grievancesand n ational assessments - was 0.09 in 19 72,0.02 n 1974and 0.03 in 1976. Othe rstudies of econom ic perceptions -most n otab ly Alt's stud y of econom ic declinein Britain - have reported identical findings in this regard.24More specifically,in recent years the pattern of data has generally been one of individualsexpressing much higher levels of satisfaction and optimism about their owneconomic situation than about the nation's.25

Th e only sub stantial connection we could uncover w as between the particularecono mic problem s citizens cited as mo st significant in their o wn lives an d thosenamed as the country's m ost pressing. F or example, in the 1974 survey, of thosewho complained about inflation as a personal problem 52.6 per cent namedinflation as the mo st serious national p roblem , compare d w ith 41.0 per cent ofthe sample as a whole. Similarly, among those CPS respondents who named" Despite superficial app eara nce s these measures are no t a t all mutually re dun dan t. The family's

recent experience with unemployment was indeed correlated with the respondent 's subjectiveassessment of perso nal econom ic problem s b ut qu ite imperfectly (this evidence is described in detailin Kinder and Kiewiet, 'Economic Discontent and Voting Behaviour'). In any case, i t makesabsolutely no difference whether the set of pocketbook interests are included together in theregression analysis or w hether their effects are estimated separately.

24 Jam es E. Alt, Th e Politics of Econom ic Decline (Cam bridge: Ca mbridg e University Press, 1978).' V a u l W. McCracken , 'The Pract ice of Pol it ica l Economy' , American Economic Rnietr , LXIII(1973)~68-71 ;Yank elovitch, Skelly and Wh ite, Inc. , 'T he Gene ral Mills American F amily R epo rt:A Study of the American F amily and M oney ' (Minneapol is , M inn . : General Mills, Inc. , 1975).

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I40 K I N D E R A N D K I E W I E ?

personal problems associated with unemploym ent as their most serious, I 5 . 5 percent indicated unemployment as the country's most important problem, asagainst 4.4 per cent of the entire sample. S o there is some connec tion betweenpocketbook discontents and experiences on the one hand and assessments ofnational economic conditions, on the other - but it is generally a very loosecoupling. Consequently, it is neither hopeless in practical, statistical terms, nortrivial as a theoretical matter, to distinguish an d test between the p ocketbo okand sociotropic predictions.A complete regression model of congressional voting, which incorporates allthese pocketbook and sociotropic measures, is presented formally in Table 2 .As indicated there, the equation also includes a measure of the respondent'sparty identification. Wh at we are look ing for, then, are deviations from a purelypartisan division of the vote as prom pted by pocketboo k economic grievances,personal economic problems a m ong them, and by sociotropic economic judge-ments, national economic problems amon g them.26Table 2 makes clear that pocketbook grievances - including the economicT A B L E 2 The EfSects of Personal Economic Grievances and SociotropicEconomic Judgements on Congression Vo ting : Ordinary Least

Squares Multiple Regression

Personal econo mic grievancesDissatisfaction with income - '0 1 - .02 '04 Unemployment experiences '05 - '01 . o8 t Personal problems - unemployment - .06 - .02 - '02 Personal problems - inflation - .06 .o I '0 I Sociotropic economic judgements

Business conditions .o8f - '03 Government performance '0 I . I I ~ .o I Party competence - , 14? . r o t National problenls - unemployment - '00 - .09$ - '05 National problems - inflation - .06 - .0 4 - .o7f Partisan attitudesParty identification .59t/ .58*+ .50t .42 t

Rz ,38 7 est.)* ,362 ,283il'ote: Entry is 0.he standardized regression coefficient. The dependent variable in each case is

congressional vote choice, taking the value o if the respondent reported voting for the opposition(Democratic) party and I if the respondent supported the incumbent (Republican) party.* In the 1972 split-sample design, N = 645 for the personal and national problems estimates,

N = 555 for the remainder. See fn. 27 . t p < . O I . % P < '05.Th e major d eterm inant of voting in congressional elections is the citizen's partisan attachm entto a political par ty - see Cam pbell et al., The American Voter,and Philip E. Converse, 'Th e Conceptof a Norm al Vote' , in Angus Campbell , Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and D on ald E. Stokes,

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Sociotropic Politics: The American Case I 41problem s tha t people nam e as their mos t pressing bo re little relationship tocongressional v oting in 1972, 1974 or 1976. Considered separately, personaleconom ic grievances accoun ted for an entirely negligible prop ort ion of variancein votin g even in 1974, in the d epth s of recession (R" 0.004, F < I), and h ardlybetter than that in 1972 and 1976 (R 2= 0.031,0.03 9, respectively; bo th p < 0.05by F test). The single pocketbook effect uncovered by the analysis was due tounemployment experiences: respondents whose families had recently run intounemployment difficulties were som ewh at more likely to vote for Dem ocraticcandidates, a pattern compatible with both incumbency-oriented and policy-oriented voting. This finding achieved statistical respectability only in 1976,however; traces of it can be discerned in 1972; nothing at all in 19 74 .~ 'Elsewhere in Table 2 the evidence is uniformly bleak for the pocketbookhypothesis. Any impulse to throw the rascals out came no more from thosedissatisfied w ith their family finances tha n from any one else. Likewise, there wasnocon vincing su ppo rt for the hypothesis that voters who mention unem ploymentas their most serious personal problem would tu rn to the Dem ocrats, while thosefeeling pinched by inflation w ould throw their su pp ort to Republican c and idates .Th us personal econom ic grievances, measured in a variety of ways, carried littlepolitical p unc h in these contests -m ore of a tap , really, than the clout typicallyassigned to pocketbook interests by social science theories.Congressional voting is, however, responsive to sociotropic concerns. Byeds. , Elections and the Political Order (Ne w Yo rk: Wiley, 1966). Th us i t is essential to remove thepossible con fou ndin g effects of partisan identification. At the sam e time we must avoid over-controll ing for partisanship. Two recent analyses have implied that 'nominal party identification'- i .e. identification as a Repub lican, an Independ ent, or a D emocrat - is a stable, enduringcharacterist ic for most citizens. Strength or intensity of partisanship - e.g . the difference betweenst rong Republ icans and weak Republ icans - is much more responsive to a variety of short-termforces (see Brody, 'Stabil i ty and Change' , and Converse, 'Public Opinion and Voting Behavior').We have therefore operationalized partisanship in i ts nominal form for the purposes of these voteanalyses. T he third section of o ur analysis take s up m ore directly the causa l interplay betweenpart isanship an d economic discontents, both pocke tbook and sociot ropic

We also ran the regressions with a set of social bac kgr oun d me asures included - age, sex, race,and a comp osite measure of socioecon omic status. Unless otherwise noted in the text, add ing thesevariables as addit ional controls had no effect on the pattern of results." Th e 1972 interview schedule was split into two overlapping bu t non -identical forms , with eachadministered to half of the full sample. This was done in order to increase the total number ofquestions th at could be aske d, and w as accomplished in such a way as to ensure that the resultingsub-sam ples each con sti tuted a representative cross-section of the electorate. As a consequence ofthis procedure, qu estions representing some elements of the basic regression model were asked ofthe entire sample - vote choice and partisanship, in particular. Oth er questions were asked only ofone half-sample o r the other. Th e major complication here is that the personal a nd national problemquestions were posed to one half-sample, the remainder of the personal economic grievances andnatio nal econom ic assessments to the o ther. Th is rules out the possibil ity of any genuine m ultivariateanalysis. R athe r than putt in g the 1972 study aside altogether, we generated estimates for the personaland n ational problem s separately from the rest. We would be much m ore reluctant ab ou t presentingthese findings if the persona l and national problems people name were highly correlated w ith otherpredictor variables. Fr om the 1974 and 1976 studies, we know th at they are correlated, bu t quitemodestly s o - see D . R . Kiewiet and D. R. Kinder, 'Poli t ical Consequence s of Econom ic Concern s -Personal a nd Collective' (pap er delivered at the ann ual meeting of the American Polit ical ScienceAssociation. New York. 1978).

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themselves, the set of variables representing respo ndents' socio trop ic econom icjudgements predicted a sizeable share of the variance in voting in the threeelections ( R 2= 0.049, 0.171, 0.164 in 1972, 1974, 1976, respectively, allp < 0.01). As indicated in T able 2, that the D emo crats were tho ug ht better ableto mana ge economic problem s (in 1974 and 1976); that the in cum bentadm inistration was seen as mishandling econom ic matters (in 1974 ); thatbusiness conditions were believed to be deteriorating (in 1972)- all of thesecontributed to voters' supp ort for D emocratic candidates, quite apa rt from theirpartisan attachm ent to a political p arty o r their personal economic discontents.Such effectsofsociotrop icjudgem ents not only achieve statistical respectability;they ar e politically significant as well. Co nsid er, for examp le, the unstan dard izedregression coefficient of 0.041 for 'P art y com petence ' in 1976. Trans lated intoprobability terms, it means that with party identification, personal economicgrievances, and (all other) sociotropic judgements held constant, voters whothought the Democrats were better at managing economic problems wereroughly 0.16 more likely to su pp ort D emocratic congressional candidates th anvoters who believed the Republicans to be superior. This is a substantial effect,even in an era of safe seats.2xTh at sociotropic judgements contribute to congressional preferences is notnews, of course. What is news in T able 2 is the evidence on the problem s thatpeople name as the country's most serious. As shown there, respondents whoso identified inflation were more likely to support Democratic candidates -significantly so in 1976, margina lly so in 1972 while resp ond ents wh onom inated un employment aiso tended to vote dispropo rtionately for Dem ocraticcandidates - but appreciably so only in 1974. (The comparison or referencegrou p ineach case was made up o frespon dents who named neither unemploymentno r inflation.) Th us the political trade-off between unemployment and inflationdoes not appear to be operating here. Support for the (Republican) in-partydiminished among those who emphasized economic problems as the nation'smost pressing - whether the problem be unemployment or inflation was by thisanalysis of little mom ent.Although more erratic than one could hope for, the data here are clear ontwo essential po int s: how citizens defined nation al proble ms was associated withtheir political preferences; how they defined their own personal economicproblem s was irrelevant to their preferences.Before leaving the cross-sectional investigation of congressional voting, weshould summarize briefly the results of three additional analyses. The first wasundertaken to see whether the estimates of sociotropic judgements might beaffected - and reduced - with mor e stringent statistical con trols placed o n partyidentification. They were not. Substituting a set of six dummy variables" David R. Mayhew, Congress: The Elecrorui Connection (New Hav en, Conn . : Yale UniversityPress. 1974); Jo hn F erejohn, ' O n the Decline of Com petit ion in Congres sional Elections' , American

Politica1Scienc.e RPI'IPII . ,X X I ( I 977). 166-76; Albert D. Cover , 'One G oo d Term Deserves Another :Th e Adva ntages of Incumbency In Congression al Elections' . Anzerican Journal c?f PoliticalScience, X X I (1977). 532-42.

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Sociotropic Politics: The American Case I43representing partisanship for the three-way version included in the originalregression equation had virtually no effect: not on the overall R2, nor on theestimates of th e individual coefficients representing sociotropic judgem ents. T hesecond additional analysis was a comp arison of the findings presented in Table2, generated by ordinary least squares regression analysis, with estimatesprovided by probit analysis, a procedure formally more appropriate with adichotomous dependent variable.29We were especially interested in learningwhether probit analysis might uncover systematic (if not large) effects ofpersonal economic grievances. It did not. Probit estimates simply recapitulatedthe regression results in Ta ble 2. (This evidence is available upon request fromthe authors.) Thirdly, we wondered whether voters' pocketbook grievancesmight 'multiply' the effects of their sociotropic assessments; that is, whetherpeople unhapp y with their own economiccircumstances would, as a consequence,attac h mo re weight to their reading of national economic conditions in reachingcongressional voting decisions, while economically more secure voters wouldweigh such assessments less. They did not. Adding to the regression model aset of multiplicative terms that together represented the interactive effects ofpock etbook grievances a nd sociotropic assessments had virtually no effect: theR2did not increase appreciably, and the main effect est imates were u n d i ~ t u r b e d . ~ ~By all this evidence on congressional v oting, therefore, the poc ketb ook predictioncontinues to struggle; the sociotropic prediction, to prosper.

However, one final route needs to be explored: whether personal economicgrievances might affect patte rns of con tinuity an d c hang e in congressional votingover time. Dem ocratic congressional candidates received the sup po rt of 55.9 percent of the CP S respondents in the 1972 election; 61.2 per cent in 1974; and 56.9per cent in 1976. Such aggregate stability conceals substantial vote switching atthe individual level. For example, of those panel respondents who reportedvoting for a Republican congressional candidate in 1972, roughly 25 per centswitched their support to the Democratic side in 1974; the corresponding'defection rate' for 1972 Democratic voters was significantly less, about 15 percent. Fo r the 1974 t o 1976 period, the figures were more symmetrical, with 22per cent of the 1974 Republican voters supporting D emocratic candidates in1976, and 26 per cent of 1974 Democratic voters travelling in the oppositedirection. Th e question here is whether such vote switching is predictable fromknowledge of voters' personal economic circumstances.Evidence on this question is provided by a pair of two-stage least squaresanalyses, done separately for change from 1972 t o 1974, and for change from

'* Th e probi t analysis progr am used was wri t ten by Richard McKelvey and W. Zavoina, whichthey describe in their ' A S tatist ical Mo del for the Analysis of Ordinal Level Depe ndent Variables' ,Journal ofM athem atica 1 Sociology, IV (1975). 103-20. Fo r a very read able, less technical desc riptionof probit analysis see Raymond E. Wolfinger and Steven J. Rosenstone, W h o V o tes (New Haven,Co nn . : Yale University Press, 1980), Appendix C .

30 For a good int roduct ion on the speci ficat ion and interpretat ion of interact ion terms inmul t ivariate analysis see J . Cohen a nd P. Coh en, Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysisfor the Behavioral Sciences (Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum, 1975).

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144 K I N D E R A N D K I E W I E T1974 to 1976. I n each case, the dep ende nt variable is congressional vo te (in 1974and in 1976, respectively). The predictor variables include the standard set ofou r personal economic discontent indicators (as assessed in 1974 an d in 1976,respectively), along with a measure representing the citizen's vote in the priorcongressional election (1972 and 1974, respectively)." Th e que stion, then, iswhether pocketbook discontents play any discernible role in the dynamics ofcongressional voting from one election to the next.The results, displayed in Table 3, offer faint support for this version of thepocketboo k hypothesis. Personal economic grievances had little to d o with shiftsin voting. Of the eight coefficients, only one approached statistical significance:voters w ho th oug ht their own financial condition t o be deteriorating (in 1976)were slightly m ore likely to sw itch their sup po rt from Repu blican can didate s in1974 to their Democratic competitors in 1976 (F,,,,, = 7.77, p < 0 . 0 1 ) . ~ ~T A B L E 3 The EfSects o f Personal Economic Grievances on Change inCongressional V of in g : Two-stage Least Squares M ultipleRegression

Personal economic grievancesDissatisfaction with incomeUnemployment experiencesPersonal problems unemploy mentPersonal problems - inflationPredicted prior voteRe

Nore: Entry is 8. the standardized regression coefficient. Non-voters on either occasion wereexcluded.

* p < .OI.31 Th e latter term is actually an estimate of the respondent 's vote in the previous election. Based

o n a n O L S regression, i t is the first stage of the two-stage proce dure. S ubsti tuting this estimate forthe actual reported vote solves thees timatio n problems resultingfrom autocorrelated erro r. An y goodeconom etric text discusses this procedure. Fo r a very readable introduction to these problems an dprocedures see Gr eg B. Marcu s, Analyzing Panel Data (Beverly Hills Ca lif. :Sag e Publications, 1979).Essentially the same p attern held for sporadic vo ters as well . Amon g citizens who failed to votefor Congress in I972 but did so in 1974, their choice in that year had nothing t o d o with econ omicmisfortu nes suffered in private life; the same is true f or voting in 1976 am on g 1974 non-v oters.N or did the evidence improve when we examined a second change hy pothesis: that voters whosepocketbook experiences worsened from one election to the next would be inclined t o switch theirvotes from the in-party to the o pposition. W e could find only traces of suppo rt for this hypothesis.Voters whose unemploym ent experiences worsened between 1972 an d 1974 were somewhat m oreinclined to switch their supp ort to De mo cratic candida tes durin g the same period. But in generalthe collective effects due to c hanges in pock etboo k experiences were at least a s frail as those reportedin Table 3.

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Sociotropic Politics: The American Case 145Thus our investigations of vote change simply reinforce the earlier cross-

sectional results. By ou r evidence, cong ression al preferences respon d principallyto sociotropic judgem ents, an d rath er little to personal econom ic grievances. Thenext section examines the same contrast, this time for presidential voting.33

P R E S I D E N T I A L V O T I N G

On several grounds one might expect that both pocketbook and sociotropicinterests wou ld play a gre ater role in presidential voting th an in the congressionalcase. Fo r one thing, each of the 435 congressional camp aigns is to som e extentunique; each reflects a special mixture of factors: idiosyncratic traditions,particular an d som etimes peculiar local conditions, diversity in the 'h om e style'chosen by the incumbent, a nd so f~r th .~ % gg re ga t in g cross campaigns, as wehave done, may have led us to understate the political importance that shouldbe accorded personal economic grievances and perhaps especially sociotropicjudgements, oriented as they a re to national condit ions. But tha nks to nationwidenews networks, presidential campaigns are much more homogeneous, beingroughly the same in Peoria as in Los Angeles. And the unique visibility of thepresidency and the enormous attention paid to those who pursue i t maysubstantially ease the processes by which pocketbo ok discontents are translatedinto political preferences; it may also contribu te to the public's sense that thepresident is or at least should be responsible for national econom ic conditions.So much for speculation. The evidence, as usual, rewards these com m on senseextrapolations unevenly - and more importantly, in such a way as both toundermine further the pocke tbook hypothes-s and to sup port a sociotropic viewof presidential votingThe relevant evidence is presented in Table 4 . The first thing to notice thereis the paltry effects due to personal economic grievances. Taken just bythemselves, pocketbook discontents accounted for about 3 per cent of thevariance in presidential voting in 1972 and for about 4 per cent in 1976,figurescom para ble to those registered for congressional v oting. If anything, the impact

33 SO ar we have neglected the ques t ion of pocke tbook discontents and turnout. It has been argu edthat the economically aggrieved will turn to the polit ical sy i tem fo r reparations a nd , consequently,will participate more, other things equal, than economically secure cit izens; see, for example.Seymour M art in Lipset, Polilical Man (Garden Ci ty, New Y .x k : Dou bleday, 1960). Others contendthat pocketbo ok discontents a re largely irrelevant to con ventronal polit ical activity, e.g. Meltzer an dVellrath, 'The Effects of Economic Policies ' , and Kay L. Schlozman and Sidney Verba, Injury toInsull (Cambridge. Mass . : Ha rvard University Press, 1979). Th e most persuasive evidence, however,is fou nd in Steven J . Rosenstone's ' Economic Advers ity and Voter Turno ut (manuscr ipt, Depa r tmentof Polit ical Science, Yale University, 1980). Analysing data from a Census Bureau CurrentPopulation Survey, Rosenstone finds that personal economic: adversity suppressed congressionalturnout in 1974. Preoccupat ion wi th personal economic problems appears to diminish somewhatthe resources that can be allocated to polit ics. Rosenstone's results corroborate our own analysisof congressional turno ut. W e find, too, that p ersonal econ omic discontents have slight (and erratic)dam peningeffects on participation. The econom ically aggrieved evidently d o not look to the nationalpolitical system for solutions - another blow to the pocketbook predict ion.

34 Richard J . Fenno , Ho me S t y l e (Boston, Mass.: Litt le, Brown, 1978).

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1 4 6 K I N D E R A N D K I E W I E T

of personal grievances was som ew hat tinier for presidential voting (co mp are theregression coefficients arra ye d in Tab les 2 an d 4). But th e essential point is thefailure of pock etbook interests to sha pe presidential preferences. In particular,McGovern's support in 1 9 7 2 and Car ter ' s in 1976 had noth ing to do wi thcitizens' complaints about deteriorating family finances nor with the economicproblem s they defined as their mo st pressing. Dem ocratic presidential cand idate sT A B L E 4 The Ef ec ts of Personal Ec o~ om icGrievances and Sociotropic

Economic Judgements on Presidential Vo ting : Ordinary LeastSquares Multiple Regression

Personal economic grievancesDissatisfaction with income '03 .oI Unemployment experiences 97 1 ,051 Personal problems - unemployment - .0 2 .oo Personal problems - inflation '05 - '03 Sociotropic ,judgementsBusiness conditions .06 .o6fGovernment performance .27f . I I ~Party competence - .40fNational problems - unemployment - '03 - ,051National problems - inflation . O I - .05$Partisan attitudesParty identification .42t/.49*f .33f R" ,394 (est.)* '599 Note: Entry is /3, the stan dardized regression coefficient. Th e dep end ent variable in each case is

presidential vote choice, coded consistently with congressional voting (see note for Table 3).* In the I972 split sample design, N = 760 for the personal and national problems estimates;N = 658 for the remainder. See fn. 27 for further detail.t p < .OI. S P < .05in bo th elections did receive somewh at greater supp ort from those voters whoha d recently suffered une mp loym ent difficulties, an d in ab ou t the sam e (mode st)measure. Thus, as in congressional voting, the political effects of personalecon om ic grievances were faint, an d they were carried principally by experienceof unemployment in the family.35O ur com mo n sense extrap olat ions fare somewh at better when we turn to therole of sociotropic judge me nts in presidential voting. As is also show n in Ta ble4 , voters ' reading of nationa l econom ic conditions were strongly l inked to their

35 This effect of unemployment experiences on presidential voting may be less robust than itappears . W hen a set of social back gro und variables (age, race, sex, socio-eco nom ic status) is add edto th e basic regression model, th e effect vanished in 1976 (although no t in 1972).

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Sociotropic Politics : The American Case 147support for presidential candidates, more so than in congressional voting, andparticularly in 1976. Carter's support in 1976 came substantially from thosevoters who thought that business conditions were declining, and who gave thecurrent (Republican) administration bad marks as economic problem solvers.As in the case of congressional voting, there was no indication here of a politicaltrade-off between unemployment and inflation: Carter's votes camedisproportionately and in equal measure from those who believed unemploymentor inflation to be the most serious national problem.36These various conclusions survive intact the results of three additionalanalyses. Firstly, replacing the three-way measure of partisanship with a set ofsix dummy variables did not alter the estimates of the effects due to sociotropiceconomic judgements. The regression model was then further expanded toinclude measures of voters' evaluations of the two contending candidates (basedon CPS thermometer ratings) plus their comparative evaluation of the two majorparties (the difference between voters' evaluations of the Republicans and theDemocrats, both derived from thermometer ratings). Following this procedure -which deliberately over-controls on partisanship - sociotropic judgementscontinued nevertheless to contribute substantially to presidential voting.Secondly, estimates provided by probit analysis again simply corroborated theOLS results. In particular, the slight role played by personal economic grievancesin presidential voting was confirmed by probit analysis. Thirdly, in followingthe same procedure outlined in the preceding section, we could find no evidenceof interactions between pocketbook grievances and sociotropic economicjudgements. The public's reading of national economic conditions was animportant ingredient in presidential voting, as much for voters who werefinancially secure and satisfied as for those who were themselves struggling witheconomic problems.

One final point: we suggested earlier that research on presidential electionshas generally been kinder than investigations of voting at other levels to thepocketbook prediction. Studies involving a variety of analytic techniques havereported consistent relationships between citizens' retrospective judgementsabout their own economic condition and their vote for president. Klorman'snormal vote analysis, Fiorina's logit analysis, Tufte's contingency table analysis,and Wide's correlational analysis all make this point." So too does our ownregression analysis, summarized in Table 5 . In the six most recent elections,presidential preferences were consistently, if modestly, linked with citizens'judgements about their family's financial position in accordance with thepocketbook voter hypothesis. Table 5 also presents estimates of the effects due" K ~ ew l e t ' sPolicy-Oriented Voting in Response to Economlc Issues' extends this analysis of

personal an d na tional level concern a bo ut inflation a nd un employm ent bac k to the 1956 election.Evidence of voting in response to unemployment specifically was uncovered early in the series, e.g.1958. This does not imply, however, that a political trade-off between unemployment and inflationused t o exist, because d uri ng these years very few voters perceived inflation to be a seriou s prob lem.

3' Klorman. 'Tre nds in Personal Finances ' ; F iorina, 'Econo mic Retrospect ive Vot ing ' ; Tufte,Political Control of the Economy; Wides, 'Self-Perceived Economic Change' .

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148 KINDER AN D KIEWIET

to experience of unemployment on presidential voting, again from 1956 to 1 9 7 6 .The evidence here is ragged, with the estimate fluctuating erratically from oneelection to the next, reaching statistically reliable levels in two of the six elections.And on one occasion - 1964- the effect was the opposite of that forecast by thepocketbook predicti~n,~~T A B L E 5 The Eflects of Personal Economic Grievances on PresidentialVoting Controlling on Partisanship: 19561976

1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976Pocketbook economic grievances

Dissatisfaction withincome* .062$ ,019 ,018 .047$ .032 '0341Unemployment? ,043 ,040 -.egg ,005 . I O I .15o$(N) (806) (788) (914) (724) (622) (763)Note : Entry is b, the unstand ardized regression coefficient. Fo r the personal econom ic grievancesvariables, a positive coefficient mea ns tha t gre ater discontent is associated with the opp osition party,with controls o n partisanship. Partisan ship w as represented in this analysis by a pair of du m m yvariables, with pure Independents serving as the suppressed reference group.* Th e exact question is: Wou ld you say that you (and your family) are better off o r worse off

financially than yo u were a year a go ? (or, in 1956, 1960, and 1964, inlo years ago?). Variable coded :' w o r se ' = I ; s a m e ' = o ; ' b ett er ' = - I .t A dichotomous variable coded: head of respondent 's family unemployed recently = I ;otherwise = 0. 'Rece ntly ' me ans in the preceding tw o years in 1960, 1964 and 1968; the precedingyear in 1972 and 1976; and refers to current status in 1956,$ p < .or. 5 P < '05.Thus in some presidential elections, but not in others, voting will reflect insome modest measure the economic circumstances of voters' personal lives. Andit is indeed in modest measure: adding both measures of personal economicgrievances to a regression model that included only partisanship improved the

predictability of presidential voting across the six elections by an average of lessthan I per cent (range = 0 . 2 per cent to 1 . 5 per cent). Our intensive analysis ofthe 1 9 7 2 and 1976 presidential elections, summarized in Table 4 , does nothingto alter this uninspiring conclusion, but it does provide a fresh perspective onit: for presidential voting even more completely than for congressional voting,citizens' assessments of national economic conditions- their sociotropicjudgements - overwhelm economic grievances encountered in private life.PARTISANSHIPThis final section searches for links between citizens' economic concerns -pocketbook and sociotropic - and their partisanship, relying in each case on

3R Altho ugh the evidence on unem ployment and presidential voting shown in Table 5 constituteslit tle in the way of suppo rt for the Dow nsian ' thro w the rascals o ut ' hyp othesis, i t is more com patiblewith the alternative formulation that also emphasizes voters ' pocketbook interests: namely, th at theunemployed look t o the Dem ocratic party for solutions to their problem, and therefore support theDem ocratic presidential candid ate, regardless of which party controls the W hite Ho use.

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Sociotropic Politic.;: The American Case I 49cross-lagged corre lation analysis.sg Th e first propos ition to be tested is th atcitizens who have suffered economic hardships during 1972-76, with a Repub-lican occupying the White House, will come to feel less strongly identified withthe Republican Party (if they entered the period as Republicans) or moreallegiant to the Democratic Party (if they started out as Democrats).We should be clear ab ou t ou r expectations here. Converse's co hor t analysis,Brody's preliminary explo ration of the 1972-74 CP S panel, an d more recentlystill, Converse an d M arku s's first cut a t the full 1972-74-76 panel, all suggestin different ways that the effect of personal economic grievances on partisanidentification are likely to be modest, if they show up at all, producingadjustments in the strength of identification rather than wholesale changes.40 tis one thing for Republican voters who believe their financial situation to havedeteriorated d uring a Repu blican adm inistration to feel less enthusiastic ab ou ttheir party; quite another to embrace the opposition. Shifts in strength ofidentification prompted by pocketbook grievances, although less glamoroustha n conversion fro m on e party to the othe r, would still be politically im po rtan t -if we could find them.

Unemp loyment experiences,, 0.23" * Unemp loyment experlences,4f0 . h

Partisanship,,

IDissatisfact~onwith income,, Dissatisfaction with income,,0.20"Fig. I . Personal eco nom ic grievances and partisanship, 1972 + 1974

Nol e : Entry is Pearson partial correlation, with simultaneous controls on age, sex, race, andsocioeconom ic status, al l a s assessed in 1972.

* p < .OI. t p < .05.Evidence on this questio n is shown in Figure I , which displays on e represen-tative portion of a mo re comprehen sive cross-lagged panel co rrelation analysis.

Figure I presents correlations between partisanship on the one hand andunem ploym ent experiences and dissatisfaction with the family'sfinancial position ,on the other, for the period 1972-74. These are partial correlations, with age,race, sex, and socioeconomic status serving as control variables in an effort toimprove stationarity.ll Partisanship is coded here into one of five values,reflecting both a directional and a strength component: strong Republicans;weak Republicans plus Independents leaning toward the Republican Party;pure Independents; Independents leaning toward the Democratic Party plusweak Democrats; and strong Democrats.38 A good exposit ion of this technique can be found in D. A. Kenny, 'Cross-Lagged PanelCorrelation: A Test for Spuriousness' , Psycholog ical Bulletin, LXXXII ( 1 9 7 5 ) ~345-62.J0 Phillp E. Converse, The Dynamics of Party Support: Cohort-Analyzing Parly Identificat ion(Beverly Hills, Ca lif.: Sag e, 1976); Bro dy, 'Stability an d Ch ange in Party Id entificatio n'; Philip E.Converse and Greg B. Marku s, 'Plus C a Ch an ge . . .T he New CP S Election Study Panel ', American

Political Science Review, L x x r r r (197 9), 32-49.J L For details of this procedure see Kenny, 'Cross-Lagged Panel Correlation' .

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Defined in this way , pa rtisans hip w as virtually unrelated to citizens' exp eriencesof unemployment , as shown in the top panel of F igure I . Par t i sanship andunemployment were uncorrelated in both 1972 and 1974 ( the synchronou spartial correlations were 0.01 an d -0.04, respectively); the cross-lagged corre-lations were also negligible. This perfect pattern of non-findings, moreover,continued in a comparable analysis of the 1974-76 panel.Matters improve for the pocketbook hypothesis - but only slightly - whendissatisfaction with income is exam ined (consult the bo tto m pan el of Figure I).

There the synchronous partial correlations at least hovered close to statisticalsignificance (in 1972 partia l r = 0 . 0 6 , ~< 10 ; in 1974, partial r = 0 . 0 6 , ~< 0.05).And the cross-lagged correlations suggest that citizens who felt that their ownfinancial situation was declining shifted their allegiance away from theRep ublicans (thereb y co rrob ora ting Brody's preliminary finding). Th e differencebetween the cross-lagged correlations did not reach statistical significance,however ( t = 1.08, p > 0.25)." M or e telling, perha ps, is th at the differentialcross-lagged correlation pattern shown in Figure I did not recur in the 1974-76panel .Here as elsewhere, then, we could uncover little in the way of political effectsaris ing from pocketbook grievances. Econom ic hardship in personal li fe doesn ot seem to influence voters' partisanship, just as it do es not seem seriously toimpinge on congressional and presidential voting.

This brings us finally to co nsider the in terplay between citizens' partisanshipan d their sociotropic econom ic judgemen ts. In s o doing, we confron t squarelya w orry that con tinues to n ag the sociotropic hypothesis , em bodied in the chargethat such assessments are only rationalizations for party identification.Acc ording to this argu m en t, which has its parallel in the issue-voting con troversy,judgements of government performance or party competence are hopelesslyconfound ed by a mo re fun dam ental loyal ty to par ty.43 Economic condi t ionsbecome a kind of projective test, subject to gross misperception in the serviceof preserving an d cem enting part isan identi ty.

N o do ubt some of th is does go on - events in the Un ited S tates rarely tak eo n political significance witho ut being interpreted a nd filtered thro ug h a partisanlens. The qu estion is really w hether socio tropic judgements ar e only superficialmasks for partisan identification. The availability of panel evidence affords anop po rtun ity to investigate this possibility, which we shall call the rationa lizationhypothesis. In so doing, we shall also present evidence that bears on thealternative possibility: that assessments of national economic conditions havean existence separate from part isanship, and, moreover, that changes in4 2 The t-statist ics reported in this section are associated with differences between cross-lagged

correlations. Again, see Kenny, 'Cross-Lagged Panel Correlat ion ' for an explanat ion of how theyare calculated.43 There is a voluminous l i terature on issue-voting, but most of the major points of contentionare addressed in R ichard A . Brody and Benjamin Page, 'Com me nt : T he Assessment of Issue Vot ing ',

American Political Science Review, LXVI (1972). 450-8, and in Richard G. Niemi and Herbert F.Weisberg, eds., Contro versies in Am erican Voting Behavior (San Franci sco : Freeman, 1976).

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Sociotropic Politics : The American Case I 5 Isociotropic assessments produce changes in pa rtisan identification (ra ther thanthe reverse).Once again we rely on cross-lagged panel correlation analysis, but with oneimportant amendment. Brody's analysis of the 1972-74 CPS panel studysuggested th at ch ange s in streng th of identification from 1972 to 1974 appearedto be reliably associated with sh ort-term forces principally amon g republican^.^^The prescription for our analysis is clear: we should examine the interplaybetween economic concerns and strength of partisanship for R epublicans a ndDem ocrats separately. We did s o for personal economic grievances, but w ithoutlearning anything not already revealed by the pooled analysis (summarized inFigure I ) . We also followed this procedure in analysing national economicassessments, this time with a genuine payoff.

Democrats In 1974Party competence,, Party competence:,

0.28" 10.31 'JPartisanship,, Partisanship,,0.06'/ \Government performance,, Government performance,,Republicans in 1974

0.37"Party competence-, w Party competence?,0.25"t 0.10" t 010.30"Partisanship,,

Government performancei, - Government performance,,0.40"Fig. 2. Sociotropic econom ic judgemen ts and partisanship. 1974 + 1976

Note: Entry is Pearson partial correlation, with simultaneous controls on age, sex, race, andsocioeconomic status, al l as assessed i n 1974.

* p < .or. 7 P < .05.This evidence is shown in Figure 2, which concentrates on 1974-76, as the

CPS surveys from those yea rscarried identical measures ofb ot h party com petenceand government performance. First of all, among Democrats, strength ofidentification was significantly related toju dge m en ts of governme nt perfo rm anceand to evaluations of party competence, in both 1974 and 1976, and in theexpected d irectio n. M oreo ver, the cross-lagged c orrela tions suggest that voters'assessments of national economic conditions causally dominated their intensityof identification. That is, across the 1974-76 period, Democrats became more4 4 Brody, 'Stabili ty and Change i n Party Identification '

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strongly identified with their party to the degree that they held a dim view ofthe current government's performance on economic problems (t = 1.48,p < 0.20) and to the degree th at they felt the Republicans to be inferior economicproblem solvers (t = 2.18, p < 0.05). This held for the Democrats in 1972-74as well an d just as strongly, alth ou gh this analysis was necessarily limited to thegovernment performance measure.Unfo rtunately Republicans resist this neat pattern. Figure 2 shows that am ongRepublicans in 1974-76, strength of identification was essentially unrelated tojudgements of government performance in cross-sectional analysis; the cross-lagged correlations are similarly uninspiring (this pattern is replicated in the1972-74 panel). However, evaluations of party competence and strength ofidentification among Republicans were correlated. And here the cross-laggedcorrelations follow the pattern established by the D em ocra ts: judgements ofparty economic competence influenced the intensity of identification, not thereverse (t = 1.39,p < 0.20). Republicans (in 1974) who thou gh t their party tobe proficient on econom ic problems became stronger Repu blicans; those whothought the Democrats more able became weaker Republicans.T he evidence presented in this section thus sustains the theme th at we beganwith, and which ha s run thro ugh all ou r analysis. Personal economic grievancesdo not appear to influence partisan identification, thereby foreclosing oneindirect route by which pocketbook interests might have impinged on politicalpreferences. Assessments of national economic conditions, on the other hand,were intertwined with partisanship, in particular strength of partisanship.Fu rtherm ore, we could find no evidence to s upp ort the rationalization hypothesisthat sociotropic judgements (specifically ratings of government perform ance a ndevaluations of party competence) merely represent an expression of partisanloyalties. Quite the reverse: o n balance, ou r evidence suggests th at how the publicsizes up the national economic scene constitutes an important short-termpolitical force of its own, which acts on (and through) partisanship, as well asshaping vote p references d i r e ~ t l y . ~ ~

According to the evidence presented here, American voters resemble thesociotropic ideal, responding to changes in general economic conditions, m uchmore closely than the pocketbook ideal, responding to the circumstances ofpersonal econom ic life. In the first section of the analysis we reopened the caseSociotropic economic judgem ents may n ot always play such an active role, of course. When

tlmes are unequivocally goo d or ( perh aps especially) unequivocally bad, then eco nomic conditionsare less subject to mispercep tion. When econom ic signals are less clear, rationalization is encouraged.A simi lar argumen t presumably appl ies to i ssue vot ing. When candidates take ambigu ous posi t ionson issues, as they often d o, the public's tendency to ascribe opinio ns to them so as to reinforce o rrationalize i ts ow n view is enhanced, thereby subverting the possibili ty of genuine issue-based voting.See Brody and Page, 'Com me nt : T he Assessment of Issue Vot ing ' ; Donald R. Kinde r, 'Presidents,Prosperity, and Public Opinion' , Public Opinion Quarterly, forth com ing; and especially BenjaminI. Page, Choices and Echoes it2 Presidential Elections (Chicago: University of Chicago P ress, 1978).

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Sociotropic Politics: The American Case I 53o f congressional voting, prom pted mainly by an interest in providing a fairertest of the poc ketb ook prediction th an previous congressional election research,including our own, had done. This re-examination merely added to the priorevidence against pocketbook congressional voting. Whether voters were pre-occupied in their personal lives with rising prices o r with un emp loym ent ha d n oeffect on their votes for C ongress. And personal econom ic grievances played a tbest a minor role in accounting for patterns of stability and change incongressional voting over time, the second basis for our re-examination.M oreover, the ma ny failures of the pocketbo ok prediction were hardly confinedto the congression11 case. As dem on strated in the second a nd third parts of theanalysis, poc ketb ook interests were weakly an d erratically related t o presidentialvo ti ng , and had v irtually no th ing t o do w ith p a r t i ~ a n s h i p .~ ~

Th e evidence was m uch stronge r at each point for the sociotropic prediction.We fou nd th at voters ' definitions of national econom ic problems correlated withtheir political preferences. Moreover, voters' judgements of recent trends ingeneral business co n ~ it io n s, heir rat ings of the incumbent ad ministrat ion's16 On e way to account for the pock etbo ok prediction's dismal record here is to explain the findings

away. Perhaps we have measured economic grievances inadequately; if so, the frail relationshipsbetween political preferences .ind pocketbook interests would not reflect the true state of affairs atall, but rather deficiencies in c u r assessment of persona l econo mic grievances.

This is a legitimate criticism but no t a telling one : substan tial evidence supp ort s the construc tvalidity of ou r measu res. Part of this evidence is drawn from the CP S surveys themselves. in thatreplies to the questions o n perso r,al econom ic grievances did show the expected degree of consistency.People who c omplained a bo ut un employm ent o r declining real income. for example, were also l ikelyto express dissatisfaction with their family's financial cond ition. (T his evidence is presented in detailin D. Roderick Kiewiet and Dona ld R. Kinde r, 'Poli tical Consequences of E conomic Concerns -Personal and Collective' , paper delivered at the ann ual meeting of the A merican Polit ical ScienceAssociation, New Y ork, 1978.) Mo re persuasive, perhaps, is evidence drawn from ex ternal sources,such as Klorman's 'Trend in Personal Finances' . Analysing data from an Insti tute for SocialResearch (U niversity of M ichigan) income dyn amic s panel survey. he fou nd stron g relationshipsbetween citizens' retrospective judge men ts of their financial progress, on the one han d, and cha ngesin family income, on the othe r. For m ore corroborative evidence based on sti ll anothe r dat a sourcesee Stephen J. Rosenstone. Raymor d E. Wolfinger. and Richard A. Mclntosh, 'Voter Turnoutin Midterm Elections' , paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Polit ical ScienceAssociation, New Yo rk, 1978. And at the aggregate level such retrospective judgements fluctuate(if sluggishly) with ch anges in national econom ic conditions. F rom 1956 to 1976, for instance, th eproportion of respondents who reported improvements in their family's financial condition wasgreatest in 1964 (41 per cent), also the year registering the shar pest increase in real per cap itadisposable income; the survey questior recorded the least satisfaction in 1974 (25 per cent), whendecline in real income was the most PI-onounced.Over the eleven election surveys spanning thistwenty-year period. the Pearson correlation between change in real income and retrospectivejudgements of family financial progreis was 0.68. Finally and most tel l ingly, improving themeasurem ent of personal econo mic adversity does no thing to alter our verdict on the pock etbook'sminimal poli t ical effect. We have recently developed an extensive battery of questions to ta p personaleconomic experiences and worries. Aided by a more comprehensive, sensitive, and reliable gaugeof pock etboo k grievances, we neverthelesc find virtually no s upp ort for the po cketbook prediction -see Donald R. Kinder, W. Michael Denney. and J . Stephen Hendricks, 'Poli t ical Co nsequence s ofInflation' (m anuscript , D epar tmen t of Poli tical Science, Yale University, 1980). The measurem entof personal economic grievance does no t seem t o be the problem. T he measures are up to customarymethodological stand ards . But the d iscontent they ta p seldom gets expressed in poli tical judgements.

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154 K I N D E R A N D K I E W I E Thandling of economic matters, their evaluation of which party was betterequipped or more inclined to solve national economic problems, all contributedto their decision about which congressional candidate to support; substantiallyinfluenced their presidential voting; and affected even the most central ofpolitical predispositions, party identification. Political preferences thus seem tobe shaped by citizens' conceptions of national economic conditions, not by theeconomic circumstances of their personal lives. Politics is carried on socio-tropically, not at the level of the po~ketbook.~~What, then, are the implications of a sociotropic politics? In this final section,we would like to explore several, including: ( I ) differences within the somewhatmiscellaneous collection of judgements that we have so far lumped togetherunder the label of 'sociotropic'; (2) the rationality of sociotropic voting; and(3) speculations about the psychological underpinnings of sociotropic politics.

T Y P E S O F S O C I O T R O P I C J U D G E M E N T SUntil now, we have made no effort to distinguish between types of sociotropicjudgements. Definitions of national problems, general business conditions,government performance, and party competence have been treated indiscrimin-ately. For the purpose of comparing pocketbook and sociotropic models ofvoting, this has been a sensible strategy. There are nevertheless importantdifferences between the various sociotropic indicators, and their roles in thevoting decision could well vary from one context t o another. I t is instr