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Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 621–632

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Electoral Studies

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/e lectstud

When do voters actually think “It’s the Economy”? Evidence from the2008 presidential campaign

Matthew Singer*

Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut, 341 Mansfield Road, U-1024, Storrs, CT 06269 1024, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 13 October 2010Received in revised form 12 April 2011Accepted 24 May 2011

Keywords:Economic votingRecessionSalience2008 Presidential election

* Tel.: þ1 860 486 2440.E-mail address: m.singer@uconn.edu.

0261-3794/$ – see front matter � 2011 Published bdoi:10.1016/j.electstud.2011.05.008

a b s t r a c t

Studies linking election outcomes to economics frequently assume that the economy’ssalience is constant. This study shows that the economy’s salience systematically fluctu-ates. The number of voters focused on economic issues shifted dramatically throughout the2008 campaign as the recession worsened and this change occurred well before thefinancial markets collapsed in September 2008. However, even during the recessionsubstantial numbers of individuals said their vote was based on non-economic issues andfor these individuals there was no relationship between their assessment of the economyand their electoral choice. Consistent with extant theories of issue attention, citizens whowere the hardest hit by the recession and those who had the most anxiety about sufferinga financial dislocation in the future were most likely to consider economic performanceelectorally important while secure voters were less likely to be economic voters.

� 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1 This is part of a larger literature on why the economy’s electoral effect

1. When do voters actually think “It’s the Economy”?Evidence from the 2008 American presidentialcampaign

There is an ongoing debate over the importance of theeconomy for electoral outcomes. One camp of scholars isemphatic that the economy has constant effects over timeand across the electorate. Vavreck’s statement (2009, 31,“the economy is the clarifying issue. this issue is alwaysimportant to voters in presidential elections” is echoed byothers who claim “[t]he economy is always an importantissue to voters” (Wlezien, 2005, 556) or that “economicpolicy has a consistent impact over time” (Mcavoy, 2006, 7).Regarding the electorate, van der Brug et al. (2007)conclude the economy’s impact is “widespread, affectingall classes and conditions of voters almost equally” (136).Others argue the economy’s impact is variable across

y Elsevier Ltd.

elections and within the electorate (see Singer, 2011 fora review).1 A major disagreement concerns whethereconomic voting becomes more pronounced in a recession(Mueller, 1970; Bloom and Price, 1975; Gough, 1984;Claggett, 1986; Pacek and Radcliff, 1995; Nannestad andPaldam, 1997; Singer, 2011) or not (Kiewiet, 1983; Lewis-Beck, 1988; van der Brug et al., 2007).

Given the disparate evidence on the consistency of theeconomy’s salience, this studyexamines the evolutionof theissue agenda in a single election–the 2008 U.S. generalelection. Specifically, I test whether the acceleratingeconomic crisis served to focus voter attention on economicissues. Aggregate survey data show that economic policy

varies across contexts (see Anderson, 2007 for a review). While I focus ondifferences in the economy’s salience as a potential explanation, theeconomy’s effect might also vary if voters cannot clearly hold thegovernment accountable for economic outcomes, if the economy is notserving as a useful signal of the incumbent’s competence, or if voterscannot coordinate on a single replacement for the government.

M. Singer / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 621–632622

increasingly dominated the agenda as the election nearedwhile the salience of foreign policy and social issues, whichdominated early on, dwindled. I employ individual-levelsurvey data to investigate the mechanisms underlying thischange.My results suggest individuals adversely affected bythe recession orwho expected to suffer financial dislocationin the future were the most likely to base their vote on theeconomy. These dynamics within the electorate confirmthat voters arenot always equally interested in theeconomy,and that economic vulnerability and insecurity focus citizenattention on economic issues.

1.1. Voter attention to economic performance

Themain theoretical reasonwhy the economy’s salienceshould vary across contexts and individuals is, as Iyengarand Kinder (1987) put it, “people do not pay attention toeverything” (64).2 Short attention spans and restrictedinformation processing capacities limit the number ofissues voters can, and are willing to, think about (see Lauand Redlawsk, 2006 for a review). Therefore just keepingtrack of the issue agenda is challenging, let alone assigningpriority to and responsibility for the issues on it. Whilemost voters probably care about incumbents’ economicperformance some, or even most, of the time, they mightalso care about their performance on foreign policy, crime,the environment, social policy, andmyriad other policy andnon-policy domains. Given such a diversity of issues, weshould not expect the criteria and standards by whichvoters evaluate incumbents to be fixed within the elec-torate or over time.

Issues become salient if they meet two conditions(Lavine et al., 2000). The first is accessibility. The easier it isfor voters to think about and collect information on an issue,themore salient is can become (Zaller,1992). Media contentand campaign strategy may help set voters’ agenda byinforming voters and priming their concerns about specificissues (McClure and Patterson, 1974; Ansolabehere andIyengar, 1996; Iyengar and Kinder, 1987; Vavreck, 2009).Such additional information and attention tends reinforcesconcerns voters already hold. Of course the extent to whichthemedia influences the accessibilityof an issuedepends onhow that information is conveyed. Negative information, forexample, is more easily recalled than other types of infor-mation (Rozin and Royzman, 2001).

Issues voters consider personally important also tend tobemore salient. Thosewho believe a policy areawill impacttheir own well-being have more ready opinions about it,more completely perceive candidate positions on it, andweigh them more than other issues in their behavioraldecisions (Aldrich and McKelvy, 1977; Brehmer, 1977;Lavine et al., 2000; Krosnick, 1988; Bizer and Krosnick,2001; Bizer et al., 2004; c.f. Young et al., 1987).3 In otherwords, people do not choose their messages randomly orby merely following political communications but insteaddeliberately act to ensure that their interests are protected.

2 This section builds on Singer (2011).3 The last step of course assumes that they believe that this issue is

politically relevant (e.g. Feldman, 1982; Gomez and Wilson, 2001).

The economy’s salience to voters is thus conditional uponits accessibility and importance. It frequently meets theseconditions. Economic fluctuationsmake up a large portion ofnews coverage, and candidates’ economic priorities make upa large portion of campaign discourse and advertising (West,2010; Vavreck, 2009). In particular, during bad times theopposition will have incentives to talk about the economywhile in good times the ruling party will focus on theirrecord, meaning that there is always a group wanting tocampaign on it. Both phenomena enhance the economy’saccessibility for voters. Since most people care about andfollow issues pertaining to their economic well-being, theeconomy is comparably more important for a greaterproportion of the electorate than other prominent issues likewelfare or old-age care (Rehm, 2009), foreign policy (Aldrichet al., 2006), and abortion (Abramowitz, 1995) that havea more defined base. Because the economy is frequentlymore accessible, both in absolute and comparative terms, itspotential to shape electoral outcomes is great.

Despite their general importance, however, economicissues are more likely to be accessible at certain times thanothers. In particular, citizen attention to economic issuesshould be greater during a recession for at least threereasons. First, negative outcomes are more easily remem-bered than positive ones (Lau, 1985). Second, media atten-tion to the economy increases during a recession (Soroka,2006). Third, the emphasis to economic issues by politicalcampaigns rampsup in an economicdownturn (West, 2010).Although incumbents will emphasize their strong economicrecord during good economic times (Vavreck, 2009), otherissues draw the attention of the media and voters. Just aseconomic crises can sharpen voters’ focus on economicissues, non-economic crises may draw attention away fromthe economy. Foreign policy crises, for example, have beenshown to sap attention from economic performance and toweaken the economy-government support linkage (Wilcoxand Allsop, 1991; Edwards et al., 1995; Abramson et al.,2007; Bali, 2007, c.f. Mcavoy, 2006). The economy is alsoless salient on the heels of terrorist attacks (Singer, 2011).High levels of corruption andhuman rights abuses also focusattention away from the economy and towards improvedgovernance and democracy (ibid). As these non-economiccrises fade, their accessibility may fade as well.

If the accessibility of economic performance variesover time, so should its importance to within the elec-torate. Economic fluctuations do not affect everyoneequally. When the economy slows, some sectors are hitharder than others are. Workers differ in their job securityas well as their abilities to find new employment. Inves-tors differ in their financial exposure. Citizens with greaterlevels of savings and access to resources through familyconnections/government programs or lower levels ofpersonal debt may have less to fear from a personaleconomic dislocation. Taken together, these factorsdetermine how much people have to lose during badtimes and how much they value the good times thatremove the threat of dislocation from their lives. Thusrecessions should thus raise the economy’s salience mostamong most threatened by its ill effects and mosteconomically precarious. On the other hand, citizens whoare personally insulated from economic downturns may

4 Although they look only at two forms of vulnerability-age andunemployment.

5 hhttp://www.icasualties.org/.6 http://www.nber.org/cycles/dec2008.html.7 http://www.standardandpoors.com/indices/sp-case-shiller-home-

price-indices/.8 All economic data except stock and housing values from the Federal

Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

M. Singer / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 621–632 623

be less likely to ground their voting decision in economicperformance (Weatherford, 1983; Hibbs et al., 1982;Hellwig, 2001; Dorussen and Taylor, 2002; Singer, 2011;c.f. van der Brug et al., 2007).

Yet these arguments about the economy’s variablesalience have received scant attentionwithin the very largeliterature on economic voting. Most studies of the linkagebetween economic and political outcomes “generallyassume (although this assumption is usually unstated) thateffects of the economy. are largely homogenous” (van derBrug et al., 2007, 24). Two of the four quotes about theeconomy always being important cited in the introductionto this piece, for example, come from studies that do nottest whether the economy’s effect is a constant as theydescribe. More generally, most studies pool observationsfrom different elections without considering whether theeconomy’s impact varies across contexts. Some studies areexplicit in making this choice; Lewis-Beck et al. note that“the notion of a homogenous economic voter is extremelyuseful, not to say indispensible. We want to answer thebasic question, How does Jane Q. Elector respond toeconomic boom or bust?” (2018, 384). A growing body ofresearch documents the varying effects of the economyacross elections (see Anderson, 2007 for a review). Evenwithin this literature, however, few question whether theeconomy’s underlying importance is not a constant.Instead, the dominant approach is to model the process bywhich voters decide who is responsible for economicpolicymaking.

The few studies that have raised the issue of whetherthe economy’s accessibility and importance vary reachmixed conclusions. There is some evidence that a weakeconomy has a larger electoral effect than does a strong one(Mueller, 1970; Bloom and Price, 1975; Gough, 1984;Claggett, 1986; Pacek and Radcliff, 1995; Singer, 2011).Other studies, in contrast, find no difference in economicvoting during recessions (Kiewiet, 1983; Lewis-Beck, 1988;van der Brug et al., 2007). Most of the positive findingsregarding enhanced economic voting in a recession comefrom studies using aggregate data while null findings comefrom individual-level data. van der Brug et al. (2007)attribute this difference to a bias in aggregate levelstudies of election swings. Parties, they argue, are less likelyto gain votes during good times than they are to lose votesduring bad times because most of the swing voters (thoseindividuals most likely to abandon the incumbent duringa recession or switch from an opposition party during goodtimes) already supported the ruling party in the previouselection or else it would not have won. Thus the potentialfor gaining evenmore votes is smaller than the potential forlosing votes as the electoral coalition fractures, a processthat accelerates if there is an economic downturn. Thuseven if the economy’s salience is constant over time (asthey believe it is), recessions will be more likely to generateaggregate losses than growth periods will be to generateeconomic gains.

Van der Brug et al. also argue that there is no evidencethat vulnerable voters are more likely to respond tochanges in the economy once the propensity of groups tobe swing voters is taken into account. Instead, they arguethat economic voting is “widespread, affecting all classes

and conditions of voters almost equally” (2007, 136).4

Lewis-Beck et al. 2008, 372 also find no evidence thatpoverty shapes responses to the economy in U.S. elections,while Echegaray (2005) finds only weak evidence thatclasses differ in their economic voting in Latin America.Thus the degree to which vulnerability affects economicvoting remains an open question.

2.2. The potential role of the economy in 2008

The 2008 American presidential election provides aninteresting context for studying the economy’s saliencebecause, as Campbell (2009) lays out, multiple factorscompeted for voter attention throughout the election.These issues included the deteriorating economy, theevaluation of (and future management of) two wars, themore general war on terror, the possibility of electing anAfrican-American president, social issues (includingmultiple battles over gay marriage around the country),and corruption scandals. Yet the context surrounding theelection changed dramatically in the 12–18 monthspreceding it. One the one hand, the security situation inIraq improved. American casualties peaked at 126 in May2007 but the casualty rate fell after the troop surge toaverage less than 27 deaths per month in the 14 monthsbefore the election, the lowest rate since the invasion.5

Violence in Afghanistan increased somewhat during 2008as the number of troops deployed increased in the first halfof 2008; while there was an average of around 8 deathsmonthly in the last three months of 2007 that figureincreased to just over 20 per month in the last few monthsbefore the election. Yet the combined levels of violencewere at their lowest since the invasion of Iraq. Thus votershad fewer incentives to focus their attention on foreignpolicy.

In contrast, the economic situation deteriorated,beginning its slide in the middle of 2007 (the NBER pegsthe recession as having started in December 2007).6

Housing prices were the first to begin dropping, withoverall average prices beginning to fall in March 2007. 7 Bythe 2008 election, more than 4 years worth of housingvalue gains had been lost. Unemployment rates, which hadfallen since a previous peak in 2003, also began to increasein early 2007 and then substantially accelerated in March2008; job losses continued through the end of the year.8

Retail sales peaked in December 2007 (even after takinginto account seasonal shopping) but began to slide inJanuary and fell every month in 2008 compared to 12months previously. Gas prices hit historical highsthroughout the summer of 2008, although they fell withthe end of summer. Finally, the stock market peaked inOctober 2007, and while there was a rally in May 2008, it

11 The alternative strategy to see if the economy’s impact varied overtime would be to model electoral support for the Republican Party asa function of the perceived state of the economy over time. Using a directmeasure of the economy’s salience is preferable to this strategy however

M. Singer / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 621–632624

fell in value throughout 2008 with the slide accelerating inOctober when banks and mortgage companies begandefaulting. Taken together, the American economy wasfacing pressure on multiple fronts affecting numeroussegments of the electorate. Public sentiment reflected themacro conditions; consumer confidence fell throughout2007 and the first half of 2008. Although there was a smallrally in confidence in September as gas prices fell,consumer confidence dropped again with the combinedstock market crash and spike in unemployment.9

The combination of these the improved security situ-ation and worsening economy should have shifted theissue agenda in the months leading up to the election. Thepopular narrative surrounding the 2008 campaign islargely consistent with this story. Most observers of the2008 campaign agree that, by the end, the dominant issueof the election was economics (e.g. Ceaser et al., 2009,145–150; Mellow, 2010, 149–50; Conley, 2009, 177–8;Beachler, 2009; Duch, 2009; Lewis-Beck and Richard,2011; c.f. Kenski et al., 2010; Johnston et al., 2010). Manyobservers, including those who worked on the campaigns(Institute of Politics, 2008, 192–3; Hall Jamieson, 2009, 25,27, 60, 88–9), in particular point to the banking crisis inSeptember as the turning event in the election thatfocused the citizen and media agenda solely oneconomics. While the combination of dissatisfaction withthe Bush presidency and Obama’s perceived advantageson domestic issues (Campbell, 2009; Conley, 2009)created an issue agenda that left few opportunities for theRepublicans, the McCain campaign had hoped to gaintraction by focusing on energy, values, and Obama’sperceived lack of experience in the last month of thecampaign. But Bill McInturff, McCain’s pollster, argues thattheir attack strategy against Obama was swamped by thecollapse of Lehman Brothers, as was their ability to set theagenda of the campaign afterwards. “The campaignimplodes. There is no campaign anymore. There is only theeconomic crisis in America, and what you want to sayabout [it]” (Institute of Politics, 2008, 204).

Yet even with these popular narratives, the degree towhich the 2008 recession actually focused voter attentionon the economy remains an open question. For example,the marginal impact of the economy on voter allegiancesdoes not seem to have shifted after the Lehman Brotherscollapse but instead was constant through September andOctober (Johnston et al., 2010). More broadly there isa debate about whether individuals who became morenegative about the economy in the months leading up tothe election became increasingly likely to support Obama(Duch, 2009; Scotto et al., 2010) or not (Hillygus andHenderson, 2010; Johnston et al., 2010; Kenski et al.,2010).10 Thus the specific role that the economy played in2008 remains an open empirical question.

9 See data from the Michigan survey of consumers as compiled by theFederal Reserve Bank of St Louis.10 Johnson et al. (2010) and Kenski et al. (2010) explicitly questionwhether retrospective factors mattered at all in explaining votes forObama. However, the models with mull findings for retrospective vari-ables control for presidential approval which is strongly affected byperceptions of economic outcomes.

3. What issues were important to voters in 2008?

A challenge in studying the economy’s salience ariseswith the issue of measurement. A frequent tactic in studiesof the economy’s salience is to model the associationbetween economic perceptions/outputs and politicalbehavior to examine if the magnitude of that relationshipvaries over time or within the electorate. As van der Bruget al. (2007) recent critiques, highlight, however, thisanalytic strategy is potentially biased if scholars cannotmodel the underlying propensity of voters to switch theirvotes. This method also cannot distinguish whether a weakassociation between economics and electoral politics isbecause voters were not interested in the economy, couldnot determine which party was responsible for thoseoutcomes, or failed to indentify a suitable replacementparty (Singer, 2011, 290–1). Thus a few studies focused onother issue areas (Young et al., 1987; Blais et al., 1998;Fournier et al., 2003; Bélanger and Meguid, 2008) suggestthat one should complement thismethod by directly askingvoters what issues were important to them. These studiesshow that voters who said that an issue was important tothem tend to have greater correspondence between theirperception of the candidates’ positions on those issues andtheir electoral choices. This direct measure of issue saliencethus allows scholars to isolate the causal mechanism fromworries about individual propensities to be swing voters.Singer (2011) finds the impact of growth, unemployment,and inflation on government electoral support is signifi-cantly higher among those citizens in 39 countries whosaid their primary interest in the election was on economicissues. Singer does not examine, however, whether theeconomy’s salience varies over time or whether suscepti-bility to a recession helps focus voter attention on theeconomy.

Thus to seewhether the public’s issue concerns changedduring the presidential campaign, I look at a number ofsurveys that askedwhat respondents’most important issuewas/would likely be in deciding for whom to vote.11 Oneadvantage of this specific question compared to the otherfrequently used measures of issue salience that asks votersto “name the most important problem facing the country”(e.g. Vavreck, 2009; Duch and Stevenson, 2007) is that itavoids asking respondents to name the most important“problem” facing the country, a question that has beenshown leads respondents to focus exclusively on problems

because it can specify the mechanism that underlies the difference. Datathat show that the economy’s impact varies across samples or acrossgroups within them cannot say if this is due to changing salience orbecause individuals differed in their propensity to hold the governmentresponsible for economic fluctuations or in their propensity to be swingvoters (van der Brug et al., 2007). The 2008 election raises a second issuein that the relative lack of variation in economic perceptions withinthe electorate makes it difficult to estimate the impact of economicfactors and compare these estimates to previous elections (Holbrook,2009, 477–8).

020

4060

80

01jul2007 01oct2007 01jan2008 01apr2008 01jul2008 01oct2008date

Economy and Prices Iraq War or TerrorismFitted values Fitted values

Most Important Issue 2008 Presidential Elections

Fig. 1. What issue is personally most important to you in deciding which candidate you will support? (Compiled from ipoll and Scotto et al. (2010))

15 The pattern in the 2008 election differs radically from the dynamics

M. Singer / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 621–632 625

instead of policy issues where the government has hadsuccesses (Wlezien, 2005).

Fig. 1summarizes the results of 47 surveys conductedduring the 2008 campaign (June 2007 to November 2008)by 8 polling organizations compiled from the RoperCenter’s Ipoll database (http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/) and Scotto et al. (2010).12 To simplify the presenta-tion, I focus on two sets of issues: the economy (growth,jobs, prices) and defense policy (generally the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan and the fight against terrorism).13 These sets ofissues were the two most frequently mentioned in nearlyevery survey examined although they do not exhaust theissue agenda (see Table 2). The questions differ in theirspecific phrasing and the number of issues respondentscould choose from; details are provided in the appendix.14

Despite these differences and sampling variance, thereis a clear trend within the election. More than a year beforethe election, voter attention was focused primarily on non-economic issues, especially defense (although arounda third of the electorate said they were interested in issuesbeyond guns/butter). This is consistent with extant theorygiven the intensity of conflict and the relatively strongeconomy. As the economy weakened and Iraq stabilizedsomewhat the economy’s importance increased. Even asthe primary elections began in January, the electoratementioned foreign affairs and economic issues as

12 These surveys include the marginal percentages from the ANES andKaiser surveys analyzed in more detail below.13 Campbell (2009) shows that voters who said that Iraq was the mostimportant issue to them tended to vote Democrat while those whofocused on terrorism tended to vote Republican. However, many of thepolls aggregated here do not distinguish between these two policy areasand so I aggregated them across the sample.14 After controlling for the date onwhich the survey was conducted ABCnews polls tended to have 7–10% lower numbers of people saying that theeconomy was their most important issue.

important with roughly equal frequency. Attention to theeconomy steadily increased as the economy deterioratedthroughout the summer. By the end of summer a majorityof all voters said they were primarily focused on economicissues.15 The data in Fig. 1 suggest voter attention toeconomic questions was not merely driven by the collapseof Lehman brothers and the banking crisis in the fall of2008 (as many observers assumed) but instead followeda more gradual swing in the nation’s attention as theeconomy worsened.16

Yet not all voters were economic voters; even in pollsconducted in late October/early November 2008 between38–48 percent of respondents said they were focused onnon-economic issues. The trend of high but incompleteemphasis on the economy continued through Election Day.The specific number of voters who said they were focusedon the economy varies across post-election surveys; in theNational Election Study, 52 percent of respondents said theeconomy was the most important issue in deciding theirvote while a higher percentage (63%) said they werefocused on economic issues in the VNS exit polls.17 Yet bothsurveys agree that even after the financial sector collapseand a final wave of the campaign that had focused on

in recent American elections. For example, polls taken well before the2004 election suggested a plurality of voters were interested ineconomics, but defense issues were the most cited as the basis of elec-toral choice at the end of the campaign because the candidates shifted theagenda to the ongoing difficulties in Iraq (Singer, 2011). Defense and thewar on terror were also the most frequently mentioned important issuein the 2002 and 2006 congressional elections (ibid).16 Thus it is not surprising that Johnson et al. (2010) do not find anincreased linkage between economic perceptions and voting intentions inthe second half of September; the linkage was already very strong beforethe banking system collapsed.17 One difference between these surveys is the VNS salience question isclosed-ended while the ANES question is open-ended.

Table 1Expressed importance of economic issues for the votes and support forMcCain in the 2008 election (National election study).

[1] (SE) [2] (SE)

Evaluation ofthe national economy

0.254* (0.125) �0.030 (0.201)

Economy important �0.438 (0.270)Important*national

economy0.529* (0.266)

Ideologicalproximity to McCain

0.702*** (0.098) 0.711*** (0.099)

Partisanship 1.800*** (0.165) 1.798*** (0.166)Female 0.044 (0.230) 0.079 (0.233)Age 0.224* (0.106) 0.243* (0.108)Education 0.001 (0.050) 0.003 (0.051)Income 0.026 (0.020) 0.026 (0.020)Black �3.899*** (0.680) �3.889*** (0.677)Hispanic �0.855** (0.331) �0.832* (0.331)Prays frequently 0.252** (0.081) 0.258** (0.082)North central region �0.169 (0.460) �0.205 (0.455)South 0.035 (0.416) 0.066 (0.417)West �0.240 (0.406) �0.260 (0.405)Constant �6.098*** (1.023) �6.002*** (1.026)N 959 959LR c2 256.6*** 261.4***Pseudo R2 0.56 0.563

Binary logit, standard errors in parentheses.*p < 0.05.**p < 0.01.***p < 0.001.

M. Singer / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 621–632626

economic policy, the economy was the dominant issue butmany voters remained principally interested in non-economic issues.

These differences in issue emphases impacted voterbehavior. Table 1 presents a logit model of the respondent’sself-reported vote for McCain (excluding abstainers) in the2008 American National Election Study (ANES) as a func-tion of economic considerations, partisanship, ideologicalproximity to the Republican candidate, and some demo-graphic controls.18 The partisanship and ideology controlsshould control for the underlying propensity of voters to beswing voters. Voters were asked how they thought theeconomy was doing compared to the previous year and, asone would expect, those most pessimistic about theeconomy were significantly less likely to vote for theRepublican candidate.19 Specifically, an average indepen-dent who thought the economy was only “somewhatworse” at the time of the election than it had been a yearbefore had an expected 0.49 probability of voting forMcCain. In contrast, if that same voter thought theeconomywas “muchworse” than it had been, the predictedprobability of voting for the nominee of the incumbent’sparty fell to 0.43, an decrease of 0.06.20

However, this effect across the entire electorate masksa difference within the electorate. In the next column Imultiplicatively interact the economic perceptionsmeasure with a dummy variable that takes the value of 1 ifthe respondent said that the economy was the mostimportant issue in deciding their vote and 0 otherwise. Theeconomy’s impact is not significantly greater than 0 amongthose who said that they were basing their vote on non-economic issues. Voters for whom the economy was notsalient did not explicitly sanction the incumbent party forthe weak economy. More precisely, the predicted proba-bility of voting for McCain was the same for the averageindependent who did not think the economy was the mostimportant issue regardless of whether they thought theeconomy was “much worse”, “somewhat worse”, or even“the same” as it had been previously.

Among those who said the economy was important tothem, however, the effect of economic perceptions remainsstatistically significant. Its marginal effect is also signifi-cantly larger than among those who said other issues weresalient. Among those who said that the economy wasimportant to them, a one-point decrease in perceivedeconomic performance lowers the probability that anaverage independent voted for McCain by roughly 0.12. Theoverall pattern of economic voting documented in the firstcolumn of Table 1 and in other published studies of thiselection is driven by the half of the electorate for whomeconomic issues were especially salient.

18 In modeling the economy’s electoral effect, we look only at its role asa valence issue; see Lewis-Beck and Richard (2011) for a description ofother ways in which economic issues may have affected voting behaviorin the 2008 elections.19 Variable codings are described in the supplemental materials.20 I look at the magnitude of a one-point change on the retrospectivesociotropic scale because 88% of respondents said that the economy waseither much worse or slightly worse and so these are the most relevantcategories.

Thus even in an election conducted in the openingmoments of a recession and against the backdrop ofa banking crisis, there were many voters for whom thesaying “it’s the economy, stupid” was simply not true. Yetfor the growing proportion of voters whose attention wassquarely on economics, the economic crisis sharplyreduced their probability of voting for the incumbent par-ty’s nominee. Thus the question becomes, why did votersswitch their attention to the economy, and specifically whywere some groups more likely to be economic voters thanothers were? The next section examines the micro-levelprocesses that link recessions and the issue agenda bytesting whether individuals who were most affected by therecession were most likely to focus on economic issues.

4. Who was focused on economic performance?

The National Election Study did not include questionson how respondents were affected by the recession or onmany forms of economic vulnerability. To get at individual-level differences in who focused on economic issues moredirectly, I draw on surveys conducted in 2008 by PrincetonSurvey Research Associates for the Henry J. Kaiser FamilyFoundation. These surveys were done quarterly by tele-phone on nationally representative adult samples of 1200–2000 respondents. I focus on these surveys because theycontain a large battery on how respondents were affectedby the changing economy and they span different stages ofthe crisis.21

21 Unfortunately these surveys do not ask about voter intentions, so Icannot link these trends to electoral behavior as I did in Table 1.

Table 2Most important issue to determine which presidential candidate tosupport, February–October 2008.

February April July October

The economy 28.31 37.99 44.93 57.51Foreign policy/War/Terrorism 25.14 23.57 19.02 10.36Social policy 13.02 11.56 8.45 5.35Values/Moral issues 3.85 2.97 2.13 2.94Taxes/National budget 3.51 2.17 2.91 3.02Immigration 6.34 3.89 1.85 1.99Scandals/Government performance 15.18 14.07 2.06 1.12Candidate/Party-specific 0 0 10.93 14.77Other issues 4.53 3.55 6.81 2.59None 0.11 0.23 0.92 0.35

Percentage of respondents in each kaier survey whomentioned each issueas the most important issue affecting their vote.

M. Singer / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 621–632 627

The dependent variable comes from a question askingwhat issue was most important to the respondent indeciding who they will vote for in the 2008 presidentialelection (Table 2). In all four surveys conducted during thecampaign, more people said they were focused oneconomic issues than any other issue.22 Yet (consistentwith the other polls in Fig. 1) in the early surveys economicissues were not clearly dominant. Economic performancewas just as salient as foreign policy while significantproportions of people focused on social policy andgovernment scandals. Interest in economic policy thengrew throughout the summer, until a majority of respon-dents said they were focused on the economy in the lastpre-election poll. From this question I generate a dummyvariable that takes the value of 1 if the respondentmentioned an economic issue and 0 otherwise.

I expect the economy’s salience to be greatest amongthose voters who felt the most vulnerable to the effects ofthe oncoming recession. Kaiser included two batteries ofquestions about the specific ways in which the economicdownturn was affecting the respondent. The first battery(whichwas included in the April, July, andOctober surveys),asks about a series of potential economic problems:

As a result of recent changes in the economy, have youor your family experienced any of the following prob-lems, or not? Was this a serious problem, or not?

a. Problems paying for health care and health insurance.b. Problems paying for gas.c. Problems getting a good-paying job or a raise in pay.d. Problems paying your rent or mortgage.e. Losing money in the stock market.f. Problems with credit card/personal debt.g. Problems paying for food.

For each of these potential economic dislocations,respondents could, in turn, report that they had experi-enced a serious problem, they had experienced a problembut it had not been serious, or that they had not had anyproblems at all.

22 The analysis below will focus on only the last three surveys becausethe February survey did not ask about the impact of the worseningeconomy. None of the surveys asked who respondents would vote for inthe election.

The second battery of questions (included in the Apriland October surveys) moves beyond personal financialworries and asked about the respondents’ more generalanxieties. These worries could stem from fears of financialdislocation but respondents were also asked about fears inother elements of their life. Specifically, respondents wereasked about 10 potential problems and their level ofanxiety regarding each of them:

Next, I’m going to read you a list of things that somepeople worry about and others do not. I’d like you to tellme how worried you are about each of the followingthings. (First/Next,) howworried are you about (Insert):Are you very worried, somewhat worried, not tooworried, or not at all worried?

a. Having to pay more for your health care or healthinsurance.

b. Not being able to afford the health care services youthink you need.

d. Not being able to afford the prescription drugs youneed.

e. Being the victim of a violent crime.f. Being the victim of a terrorist attack.g. Your income not keeping up with rising prices.h. Losing your savings in the stock market.i. Not being able to pay your rent or mortgage.j. Losing your job.

These two questions allow me to look at two separateways in which the slowing economy may affect the issueagenda. First, those who have experienced a personaldislocation may be those who have their attention mostsquarely focused on economic performance when evalu-ating the candidates. Yet individuals who have notpersonally experienced a dislocationmay still feel sufficientanxiety that they are about to lose their job or not be able tomake ends meet that they also have incentives to focustheir attention on economic issues. Thus, the secondbattery of question looks at a wider scope of effects stem-ming from the start of the recession.

A factor analysis of the specific financial problems andworries the surveys asked about shows that the stockmarket question loads on a separate dimension from theother financial variables.23 Thus I combine the five non-stock economic problems into a single indicator of theiraverage value.24 Similarly, I combine the questions aboutworries about jobs, income, and housing into a singleindicator. 25 These and the stock market questions form theprimary independent variables of interest in the analysisthat follows, coded so that high values represent high levelsof problems/anxiety. The number of people directlyaffected by the recession in areas other than the stockmarket increased slightly over the sample while thenumber of people worried about being affected increasedsubstantially over the same period. Worries about stock

23 Analysis in the supplementary materials.24 Chronbach’s alpha ¼ 0.7859.25 Chronbach’s alpha ¼ 0.7227.

Table 3Personal experiences with the changing economy and whether theeconomy was the most important issue in affecting their vote (Kaisersurveys).

Problems paying for healthcare �0.125* (0.063)Lost money in stock market 0.133* (0.058)Experienced other financial problems 0.308** (0.097)Age 0.000 (0.003)Female �0.199* (0.090)Education 0.003 (0.031)Latino �0.442* (0.184)Black 0.103 (0.177)Income 0.029 (0.034)Unemployed �0.255 (0.170)Self-employed 0.132 (0.143)Independent 0.283* (0.115)Democrat 0.355** (0.115)July 0.334*** (0.103)October 0.769*** (0.130)Constant �0.887** (0.301)N 2146LR c2 82.89***Pseudo R2 0.028Log likelihood �1441

Binary logit, standard errors in parentheses.*p < 0.05.**p < 0.01.***p < 0.001.

M. Singer / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 621–632628

market losses and actual stock market losses bothincreased dramatically.

While economic vulnerability and anxiety may focusattention on economic performance, concerns about non-economic problems may focus attention on non-economicissues. In the models where I control for economic worriesI also control for worries about being a victim of a crime orterrorist attack and expect that these concerns will focusvoters away from economic issues. Other factors (religiousconcerns, age and gender, race, etc)mayalso lead citizens tofocus on non-economic issues such as morals (homosexu-ality, abortion, etc), social policy, or immigration. Thus Icontrol for a series of demographic variables. Unfortunately,the survey does not have questions about religious prefer-ences/attendance or feelings about the war but I control forthe respondents’ partisan preferences to tap into some ofthese other issues. The partisan measures also allow for thepossibility that individuals fromdifferent parties focused ondifferent issues that their party owns (Petrocik, 1996) andespecially for the possibility that Republicanswho knew theeconomy was weak but were otherwise predisposed tosupport McCain would justify that position by focusing onother issues. Finally, I add dummies for the individualmonths to both control for clustering in the standard errorswithin surveys and also to allow for other variations in theeconomy’s salience that are not captured by the model.

5. Results

I start by looking at how personal financial dislocationsstemming from the recession affected the issue agenda ina logit model of whether or not the respondent was focusedon the economy (Table 3). In general, those who had beenpersonally affected by the deteriorating economy weremore likely to say that the economy was their centralconcern. The predicted probability that an individual whohad lost a serious amount of money in the stockmarket wasfocused on the economy, for example, was 0.10 larger thana similar person who had not lost money in the stockmarket.26 The effect of other forms of financial dislocationwas even larger; going from theminimum to themaximumon the personal financial dislocation scale raised theprobability that an average person focused on the economyby 0.23. Thus as the recession affected people’s finances,they focused their attention on economic issues.

Not all forms of economic dislocations led citizens toemphasize economic concerns. Citizens unable to pay theirhealthcare bills differed in their agenda from more securerespondents. They did not focus on economic managementbut instead gave greater weight to social policies such ashealthcare and prescription drug reform.27 These voters

26 Predicted probabilities calculated with all other values at their means.27 The web appendix has a multinomial logit analysis of the issuesvoters selected instead of the economy. The overall model fit increaseswhen the various non-economic policy options are not pooled into thebaseline category but are instead modeled separately. A challenge inthese models is that theories of preference formation on non-economicissues are relatively rare and several of the variables that these studieshighlight (e.g. religiosity and social issues/abortion, military experienceand foreign policy) are not available in these surveys.

need more than a general economic recovery to be secureand so they mobilize for protections from the specificeconomic problem they face. But most individuals whowere affected by the worsening economy tended to focuson general economic performance.

People do not have to be personally affected bya recession, however, to be motivated to action by it. Seeingothers suffer a financial drop may lead to anxiety that therespondent will experience a similar outcome. Voters whofeel insecure will worry about a dislocation happening andweigh their agenda accordingly. In Table 4 (column 1), Icontrol for citizen worries about becoming dislocated orlosing money in the stock market as well as their fears ofa non-economic dislocation. Those who worry aboutbecoming worse off in the near future are more likely to saythat the economy is important to them than were thosewho felt financially secure. The predicted probability thatan average respondent who was very concerned aboutlosingmoney in the stockmarket said theywere focused oneconomic issues when voting was 0.151 higher than wasthe probability that a similar person who was not at allworried about losing money in the stockmarket focused oneconomics. A similar change in non-stock financial worriesfrom their minimum to their maximum values increasesthe probability of economic attention by 0.147.

Fear of terrorism also drove citizen concerns in 2008.Individuals who were worried about being the victim ora terrorist attack focused on either foreign affairs anddefense policy or candidates’ personalities instead of theeconomy.28 As fear of terrorism goes from its minimum toits maximum, the expected probability that an averagerespondent focuses on the economy drops by 0.114. Fear ofbeing a crime victim has a much less consistent effect on

28 See the multinomial logit in the web appendix.

Table 4Voter anxieties and whether the economy was the most important issue in affecting their vote (Kaiser surveys).

[1] (SE) [2] (SE) [3] (SE)

Problems paying for healthcare �0.156* (0.080) �0.160* (0.08)Lost money in stock market 0.083 (0.081) 0.085 (0.14)Experienced other financial problems 0.165 (0.125) 0.464* (0.23)Worried can’t pay for health care 0.051 (0.058) 0.074 (0.060) 0.066 (0.06)Worried about being crime victim �0.091 (0.062) �0.095 (0.062) �0.091 (0.06)Worried about being the victim of terrorism �0.164** (0.059) �0.170** (0.059) �0.170** (0.06)Worried about losing money on stocks 0.200*** (0.048) 0.166** (0.057) 0.164* (0.07)Worried about other financial problems 0.182* (0.084) 0.162 (0.095) 0.269* (0.12)Worried-stocks*experienced stock problems 0.000 (0.06)Worried about other financial problems*

experienced other problems�0.185 (0.12)

Age 0.003 (0.004) 0.003 (0.004) 0.003 (0.00)Female �0.109 (0.110) �0.101 (0.110) �0.106 (0.11)Education �0.059 (0.038) �0.063 (0.038) �0.061 (0.04)Latino �0.203 (0.217) �0.215 (0.218) �0.190 (0.22)Black 0.425* (0.213) 0.436* (0.214) 0.439* (0.21)Income 0.001 (0.041) �0.007 (0.042) �0.007 (0.04)Unemployed �0.243 (0.192) �0.262 (0.195) �0.282 (0.20)Self-employed �0.178 (0.171) �0.148 (0.172) �0.126 (0.17)Independent 0.180 (0.140) 0.187 (0.141) 0.185 (0.14)Democrat 0.437** (0.140) 0.443** (0.140) 0.439** (0.14)October 0.698*** (0.110) 0.688*** (0.111) 0.695*** (0.11)Constant �0.745 (0.395) �0.721 (0.399) �0.824* (0.41)c2(Experienced/Worried, other financial problems ¼ 0) 7.870*c2(Lost/Worried, stock market ¼ 0) 17.880***N 1561 1561 1561Model c2 126.53*** 131.68*** 134.00***Pseudo R2 0.059 0.061 0.062

Binary logit, standard errors in parentheses.*p < 0.05.**p < 0.01.***p < 0.001.

M. Singer / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 621–632 629

attention to the economy, although it does lead individualsto be somewhat more likely to focus on immigration poli-tics than those who felt secure from crime. As non-economic problems generate anxiety for respondents,greater attention is given to non-economic issues.

The results in Table 3 and Table 4 suggest that personalexperience with economic hardship and anxieties abouteconomic problems both potentially focus citizen attentionon the economy. Yet while one can have worries withouthaving had personal problems and can be optimistic despiteproblems in the past, these sets of economic concerns arelikely closely intertwined. We might expect, for example,that there is an association between losing money in themarket and being worried about future losses; those whohave already lost moneymay be more likely to worry aboutlosing money in the future while those whose portfolioshave weathered the financial stormmay have reasons to beconfident moving forward.29 There is a similar correlationbetween having experienced non-stock financial problemsand having broad financial worries.30 Thus the results in the

29 The bivariate pearson’s R between these two variables is 0.60. Theaverage value on the 0–3 measure of being worried about future stocklosses is 0.65 among those who had experienced no losses in the stockmarket, 1.64 among those who had experienced moderate losses, and 2.4among those who had experienced serious investment losses. The vari-ance in stock-market worries is also significantly lower among those whohad already experienced stock losses.30 Pearson’s R ¼ 0.597.

first column of Table 4 leave open the possibility that thefindings for being worried about a financial dislocation arebeing driven entirely by those individuals who has hadpersonal financial difficulties.

The remaining columns of Table 4 thus model the jointimpact of having experienced an economic dislocation andworrying about experiencing one in the near future.Column 2 controls for both types of variables’ effect.Looking first at the financial markets, there is no evidencethat the effect for worrying about the stock market solelyreflects those individuals that had lost money in thefinancial markets-worries about stock losses are associatedwith the economy’s salience evenwhen previous losses arecontrolled for. Instead, the effect of having experiencedactual stock-market losses is almost completely eliminatedby the inclusion of worrying about the stock market. Theeffect of losing money in the stock market documented inTable 2 is thus an indirect one mediated through futureworries (Baron and Kenny, 1986). Past losses generatefurther anxiety, which then has the direct effect on theeconomy’s salience. Respondents who have lost money inthe past but do not expect to lose more in the future (eitherbecause themarket has stabilized or because their portfoliohas shifted) do not behave in the same way as those whocurrently feel vulnerable.

Financial problems outside the stock market havea different effect. When both financial hardships andfinancial worries are entered in the model, they havepositive associations with the economy’s salience but

M. Singer / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 621–632630

neither is significant at conventional levels.31 Yet a chi-square test of joint impact is significant, suggesting thatgeneral financial problems and anxieties do in fact focusattention on economic issues. In the third column, I includean interaction term to test whether these specific variablesare not linearly additive as column 2 assumes but insteadare substitutes. The interaction term is consistent with thisinterpretation. Both variables are significantly associatedwith the economy’s importance when the other one isequal to zero. This implies that they each independentlyshift voters’ agendas. Voters who have experiencedpersonal financial hardships are focused on candidates’economic management skills even if their personal situa-tion has stabilized. Individuals who have not yet experi-enced problems but are worried about their finances arealso more likely to vote based on economics. Individualswho have both problems, however, are not more likely tofocus on economic performance than are those who havejust one; the negative interaction term (while not signifi-cant at conventional levels32) implies that as they bothincrease, their marginal impact decreases such that theoverall predicted probability of the economy remainingsalient is roughly the same if the voter has experienceda large economic problem but does not worry about futureproblems, if the personworries about the future but has notexperienced a personal problem, or if both are true. Thosewho were sufficiently secure that they neither sufferedlarge problems nor had largeworries about the future werethose who were least likely to focus on economics.

Given the role of anxiety and experiences with therecession in focusing voters on the economy, it is no surprisethat as the recession worsened during the summer of 2008,attention to economic issues increased. Yet the results inthese tables show that themeasures of personal suffering donot completely explain the rise in attention to economicissuesduring the campaign; the significant dummyvariablesfor the July and October surveys show that even aftercontrolling for increases in economic misery among thesample over the summer (rising gas prices and unemploy-ment) and into the fall (the accelerating stock marketcollapse), attention to the economy was higher in July andOctober than the demographics included in the modelpredict. Personal experiences alone do not explain the rise ineconomic-focus. This is also the period in which the candi-dates began focusing more on the economy both as therecession began and as the primaries ended. As a result, theoverall accessibilityof the economymayhave increasedevenafter controlling for citizens’ personal experiences and fears.

6. Conclusion

In order to evaluate elections as instruments ofaccountability, we need to know what issues are importantto voters. Scholars disagree about whether or not theeconomy’s salience is a constant. One of the advantages ofthe present study is that it looks directly at the underlying

31 The p-value for the estimated coefficients are 0.09 for “worryingabout other financial problems” and 0.19 for “experienced other financialproblems”.32 p ¼ 0.12.

mechanism of attention on the economy and awide varietyof indicators of financial vulnerability. The data presentedhere provide further evidence that the economy’s impor-tance varies and that recessions candramatically change theelectoral agenda. Specifically, individuals who have beenaffected by a recession turn their attention to economicquestions. As the recession deepened, voter attention to theeconomy increased,making theeconomysalientwell beforethe banking sector collapsed. Moreover, attention to theeconomywas highest among thosewho had experienced orfeared an economic shiftdinsecure and exposed voterswere most likely to be economic voters. As the recessionincreased the amount of economic anxiety, the economy’soverall importance thus rose. The results in Table 1 suggestthat the effect of this rise was a stronger correlationbetween perceptions of the economy and voter choice.

Duch (2009) notes several reasons why the extantliterature on economic voting would not have predicted theeconomy to have a large impact in 2008. First and foremost,elections preceded by divided government make it difficultto attribute blame for the economic downturn and elec-tions in which the incumbent cannot run reduce the role ofpast economic outcomes as an indicator of incumbenteffectiveness (although the incumbent party may still be atleast partially held collectively accountable for economicoutcomes). The unique racial and personality dynamics ofthe campaign may have also distracted voters from theeconomy. Yet Duch also finds that the magnitude of theeconomy’s effect in 2008 was above average for the UnitedStates and substantially larger than it had been in anyelection in the previous decade. He attributes the largelevels of economic voting to the unexpected nature of thecrisis and its domestic origins (both of which potentiallyincrease voters’ abilities to extract a signal about theincumbent’s competency from those outcomes). The datadirectly measuring the economy’s salience compiled heresuggests an alternative interpretation- the economy hada large effect despite these institutional conditions becausevoter attention to the economy was extraordinarily large.Individuals affected by the recession or worried about itbecome economic voters because they feel threatened, notnecessarily because they learn about the incumbent’smanagerial abilities through that experience.

The 2010midterm elections are beyond the scope of thispaper, but the theory advanced here suggests thatcontinued economic weakness should also have made thatelection focus largely on economic issues. Available pollingdata are consistent with this hypothesis. The BrookingsInstitution post-election survey found that 47 percent ofrespondents listed “the economy” as the most importantvote in determining their congressional choice that yearcompared to 19 percent for health care, 16 percent for thesize and role of government, and 5 percent the wars in Iraqand Afghanistan.33 Exit poll data suggests that the proba-bility that a voter who thought the economy was bad votedRepublican was 0.55, the same probability that an averagevoter who thought the economy was bad in 2008 voted for

33 Survey data available from Ipoll. Conducted November 2010.

M. Singer / Electoral Studies 30 (2011) 621–632 631

Obama.34 Further analysis is needed onwhether vulnerableindividuals in particular voted on the economy.

This work has focuses on the role of the economy indriving citizen attention to the economy. One implication ofthis work for voting scholars, however, is that the economyis simply not always important. Table 1 shows that formany voters the economy was not significantly associatedwith their vote even in the midst of a recession andeconomic-focused campaign. As scholars look to modelelection outcomes or seek to study whether voters areholding governments accountable for outcomes on theirwatch, greater attention should be given to understandingwhat elements of government performance are importantat any given time. The economy will be less likely to impactthe election if voters’ attentions are elsewhere. But whencitizens’ economic interests are threatened (and thespecific threat can differ across groups and contexts), theybecome more interested in supporting politicians that candecrease the economic threats. Greater attention should begiven to modeling factors that focus voter attention on theeconomy and the variables that predict which voters willfocus on other issues instead of economics.

Appendix. Supplementary material

Supplementary data associated with this article can befound, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2011.05.008.

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