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Election Outcomes and Individual Subjective Wellbeing in Great Britain

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  • Daniel Gray
  • Harry Pickard
  • Luke Munford

Abstract

Exploiting novel longitudinal data on individuals in Great Britain matched to their parliamentary constituency, we find that supporting the incumbent political party, at both the national and constituency levels, exerts a positive influence on individual subjective wellbeing. This relationship varies across different measures of subjective wellbeing, gender and personal characteristics. We then implement a regression discontinuity in time design to estimate the impact of a quasi‐natural experiment, where we exploit the timing of the survey around the 2010 election date in order to identify a causal relationship. We find that Liberal Democrat supporters have approximately one‐unit higher level of overall life satisfaction after their party’s electoral success.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Gray & Harry Pickard & Luke Munford, 2021. "Election Outcomes and Individual Subjective Wellbeing in Great Britain," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(351), pages 809-837, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:econom:v:88:y:2021:i:351:p:809-837
    DOI: 10.1111/ecca.12362
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    2. Alex Bryson & Andrew E. Clark & Colin Green, 2021. "Footsie, yeah! Share prices and worker wellbeing," Post-Print halshs-03467147, HAL.
    3. KAMKOUM, Arnaud Cedric, 2023. "The Federal Reserve’s Response to the Global Financial Crisis and Its Long-Term Impact: An Interrupted Time-Series Natural Experimental Analysis," OSF Preprints 53qbm, Center for Open Science.

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