Theories of government approval usually assume that voters care about economic outcomes. This assumption frequently does not hold. Data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems demonstrate that although the economy is often the most important issue in an election, its place on the issue agenda varies across individuals and electoral contexts. The economy is more likely to dominate other issue concerns under conditions of economic recession, volatility, and economic underdevelopment. Moreover, at the individual level the salience of economic performance rises with unemployment and economic vulnerability. Governance crises related to corruption and human rights reduce attention to the economy, as do large-scale terrorist attacks. If the economy is not perceived as important, its effect on government approval is strongly mitigated. Thus, variations in the economy’s salience need to be further incorporated into studies linking economic and political outcomes.
Abramowitz, A.I. ( 1995). It’s abortion, stupid: Policy voting in the 1992 presidential election. Journal of Politics, 57, 176-186.
2.
Abramson, P.R., Aldrich, J.H., Rickershauser, J., & Rohde, D.W. ( 2007). Fear in the voting booth: The 2004 presidential election . Political Behavior, 29, 197-220.
3.
Aldrich, J., Gelpi, C., Feaver, P., Reifler, J., & Thompson, K. ( 2006). Foreign policy and the electoral connection. Annual Review of Political Science, 9, 477-502.
4.
Aldrich, J., & McKelvy, R.D. ( 1977). A method of scaling with applications to the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections. American Political Science Review , 71, 111-130.
5.
Anderson, C.J. ( 1995). Blaming the government: Citizens and the economy in five European democracies. Armonk, NY: Sharpe.
6.
Anderson, C.J. ( 2007). The end of economic voting? Contingency dilemmas and the limits of democratic accountability. Annual Review of Political Science, 10, 271-296.
7.
Anderson, C.J., & Singer, M.M. ( 2008). The sensitive left and the impervious right: Multilevel models and the politics of inequality, ideology, and legitimacy in Europe . Comparative Political Studies, 41, 564-599.
8.
Ansolabehere, S., & Iyengar, S. ( 1996). Going negative. New York, NY: Free Press.
9.
Bali, V. ( 2007). Terror and elections: Lessons from Spain. Electoral Studies, 26, 669-687.
10.
Bélanger, E., & Meguid, B. ( 2005). Issue salience, issue ownership and issue-based vote choice: Evidence from Canada. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago.
Bettman, J.R., & Park, C.W. ( 1980). Effects of prior knowledge and experience and phase of the choice process on consumer decision processes: A protocol analysis. Journal of Consumer Research, 7, 234-248.
13.
Bizer, G.Y., & Krosnick, J.K. (2001). Exploring the structure of strength-related attitude features: The relation between attitude importance and attitude accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 566-586.
14.
Bizer, G.Y., Visser, P.S., Berent, M.K., & Krosnick, J.A. (2004). Importance, knowledge, and accessibility: Exploring the dimensionality of strength-related attitude properties. In W. E. Saris & P. M. Sniderman (Eds.), Studies in public opinion: Gauging attitudes, nonattitudes, measurement error and change (pp. 215-241). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
15.
Blais, A., Martin, P., & Nadeau, R. ( 1998). Can people explain their own vote? Introspective questions as indicators of salience in the 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty. Quality and Quantity, 32, 355-366.
16.
Bloom, H.S., & Price, H.D. ( 1975). Voter response to short-run economic conditions: The asymmetric effect of prosperity and recession. American Political Science Review, 69, 1240-1254.
17.
Brehmer, B. ( 1976). Learning complex rules in probabilistic inference tasks . Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 17, 309-312.
18.
Carmines, E.G., & Stimson, J.A. ( 1980). The two faces of issue voting. American Political Science Review, 74, 78-91.
19.
Chappell, H.W. ( 1990). Economic performance, voting, and political support: A unified approach. Review of Economics and Statistics, 72, 313-320.
20.
Cheibub, J., & Przeworski, A. (1999). Democracy, elections, and accountability for economic outcomes. In A. Przeworski, S. Stokes, & B. Manin (Eds.), Democracy, accountability, and representation (pp. 222-250). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
21.
Dorussen, H., & Taylor, M. ( 2002). Group economic voting: A comparison of the Netherlands and Germany. In H. Dorussen & M. Taylor (Eds.), Economic voting (pp. 92-120). London , UK: Routledge.
22.
Downs, A. ( 1957). An economic theory of democracy. New York, NY: Harper.
23.
Duch, R., & Stevenson, R. ( 2007). Voting in context: How political and economic institutions condition the economic vote. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
24.
Echegaray, F. ( 2005). Economic crises and electoral responses in Latin America . New York, NY: University Press of America.
25.
Edwards, G., Mitchell, W., & Welch, R. ( 1995). Explaining presidential approval: The significance of issue salience. American Journal of Political Science, 39, 108-134.
26.
Evans, G., & Whitefield, S. (1995). The politics and economics of democratic commitment: Support for democracy in transition societies. British Journal of Political Science, 25, 485-514.
27.
Feldman, S. ( 1982). Economic self-interest and political behavior. American Journal of Political Science, 26, 446-466.
28.
Fiorina, M.P. ( 1981). Retrospective voting in American national elections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
29.
Fournier, P., Blais, A., Nadeau, R., Gidengil, E., & Nevitte, N. ( 2003). Issue importance and performance voting. Political Behavior, 25, 51-67.
30.
Franzese, R.J. ( 2005). Empirical strategies for various manifestations of multilevel data. Political Analysis, 13, 430-446.
31.
Gelineau, F. ( 2007). Presidents, political context, and economic accountability . Political Research Quarterly, 60, 415-428.
32.
Gomez, B.T., & Wilson, J.M. ( 2001). Political sophistication and economic voting in the American electorate: A theory of heterogeneous attribution. American Journal of Political Science, 45, 899-914.
33.
Harrington, D.E. ( 1989). Economic news on television: The determinants of coverage . Public Opinion Quarterly, 53, 17-40.
34.
Headrick, B., & Lanoue, D. ( 1991). Attention, asymmetry, and government popularity in Britain . Western Political Quarterly, 44, 67-86.
35.
Hellwig, T. ( 2001). Interdependence, government constraints, and economic voting. Journal of Politics, 63, 1141-1162.
36.
Hibbs, D.A., & Vasilatos, N. ( 1982). The dynamics of political support for American presidents among occupational and partisan groups. American Journal of Political Science, 26, 312-332.
37.
Iyengar, S., & Kinder, D.R. ( 1987). News that matters: Television and American opinion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
38.
Kiewiet, D.R. ( 1983). Macroeconomics and micropolitics: The electoral effects of economic issues. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
39.
Krosnick, J. ( 1988). The role of attitude importance in social evaluations: A study of political preferences, presidential candidate evaluations, and voting behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 55, 196-210.
40.
LaFree, G., & Dugan, L. ( 2007). Introducing the global terrorism database. Terrorism and Political Violence, 19, 181-204.
41.
Lau, R.R., & Redlawsk, D.P. (2006). How voters decide: Information processing during election campaigns. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
42.
Lau, R.R., & Sears, D.O. ( 1981). Cognitive links between economic grievances and political responses. Political Behavior, 4, 279-302.
43.
Lavine, H., Borgida, E., & Sullivan, J.L. (2000). On the relationship between attitude involvement and attitude accessibility: Toward a cognitive-motivational of political information processing. Political Psychology , 21, 81-106.
44.
Lewis-Beck, M. ( 1988). Economics and elections: The major Western democracies . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
45.
Lusk, C.M., & Hammond, K. ( 1991). Judgment in a dynamic task: Microburst forecasting. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 4, 55-73.
46.
Marois, R., & Ivanoff, J. ( 2005). Capacity limits of information processing in the brain . Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 296-305.
47.
Mcavoy, G. ( 2006). Stability and change: The time varying impact of economic and foreign policy evaluations on presidential approval. Political Research Quarterly, 59, 71-83.
48.
McClure, R., & Patterson, T. ( 1974). Television news and political advertising: The impact of exposure on voter beliefs. Communications Research, 1, 3-31.
49.
Niemi, R.G., & Bartels, L.M. ( 1985). New measures of issue salience: An evaluation. Journal of Politics, 47, 1212-1220.
50.
Nisbett, R.E., & Wilson, T. ( 1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231-259.
51.
Pacek, A.C., & Radcliff, B. ( 1995). Economic voting and the welfare state: A cross-national analysis. Journal of Politics, 57, 44-61.
52.
Palmer, H., & Whitten, G. ( 2002). Economics, politics, and the cost of ruling in comparative perspective: How much does context matter? In H. Dorussen & M. Taylor (Eds.), Economic voting (pp. 66-91). New York, NY: Routledge .
53.
Payne, J.W. ( 1976). Task complexity and contingent processing in decision-making: An information search and protocol analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16, 366-387.
54.
Powell, G.B., & Whitten, G. ( 1993). A cross-national analysis of economic voting: Taking account of the political context. American Journal of Political Science, 37, 391-414.
55.
Rahn, W.M., Krosnick, J.A., & Breuning, M. ( 1994). Rationalization and derivation processes in survey studies of political candidate evaluation. American Journal of Political Science, 38, 582-600.
56.
Redlawsk, D.P. ( 2004). What voters do: Information search during election campaigns . Political Psychology, 25, 595-610.
57.
Rehm, P. (in press). Risks and redistribution: An individual-level analysis. Comparative Political Studies.
58.
Reilly, M., & Holman, R. ( 1977). Does task complexity or cue intercorrelation affect choice of an information processing strategy? An empirical investigation. Advances in Consumer Research, 4, 185-190.
59.
Rodrik, D. ( 2001). Why is there so much economic insecurity in Latin America ? CEPAL Review, 73, 7-30.
60.
Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. ( 2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion . Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 296-320.
61.
Samuels, D. ( 2004). Presidentialism and accountability for the economy in comparative perspective. American Political Science Review , 98, 425-436.
62.
Shaw, D.R. ( 1999). The effect of TV ads and candidate appearances on statewide and presidential votes, 1988-1996. American Political Science Review, 93, 245-261.
63.
Sigman, M., & Dehaene, S. ( 2006). Dynamics of the central bottleneck: Dual-task and task uncertainty. PLoS Biology, 4, e220.
64.
Soroka, S. ( 2006). Good news and bad news: Asymmetric responses to economic information. Journal of Politics, 68, 372-385.
65.
Steenbergen, M.R., & Jones. B. S. (2002). Modeling multilevel data structures. American Journal of Political Science, 46, 218-237.
66.
van der Brug, W., van der EijK, C., & Franklin, M. ( 2007). The economy and the vote: Economic conditions and elections in fifteen countries. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
67.
Verba, S., Schlozman, K.L., & Brady, H.E. ( 1995). Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
68.
Weatherford, M.S. ( 1983). Recession and social classes: Economic impacts and political opinions. Political Behavior, 4, 7-31.
69.
Weyland, K. ( 2000). A paradox of success? Determinants of political support for President Fujimori. International Studies Quarterly, 44, 481-502.
70.
Wilcox, C., & Allsop, D. ( 1991). Economic and foreign policy as sources of Reagan support . Western Political Quarterly, 44, 941-958.
71.
Wilson, T., & Dunn, E. ( 2004). Self-knowledge: Its limits, value, and potential for improvement. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 493-518.
72.
Wlezien, C. ( 2005). On the salience of political issues: The problem with "most important problem." Electoral Studies, 24, 555-579.
73.
Young, J., Borgida, E., Sullivan, J., & Aldrich, J. ( 1987). Personal agendas and the relationship between self-interest and voting behavior. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50, 64-71.
74.
Zaller, J. ( 1992). The nature and origins of mass opinion. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
