IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-04a10004.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

'Guns and butter'' in U.S. presidential elections

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen Haynes

    (Department of Economics, University of Oregon)

  • Joe Stone

    (Department of Economics, University of Oregon)

Abstract

Previous models of the popular vote in U.S. Presidential elections emphasize economic growth and price stability, the role of parties and incumbency, and pre-election expectations for the future. Despite the closeness of the pre-election polls in 2004, formal models instead predict a landslide victory for President Bush. An obvious question is whether this anomaly arises, at least in part, from national security concerns – in particular, the conflict in Iraq. We explore this pre-election anomaly by introducing two opposing electoral forces capturing national security concerns, which for the 2004 election reduces President Bush's predicted vote share. In general, the impact of national security concerns on the vote share of the incumbent (or the incumbent''s party) can be substantial, whether positive, as in the 1944 election during World War II, or negative, as in the 1952 election during the Korean war and the 1968 election during the Vietnam war.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Haynes & Joe Stone, 2004. "'Guns and butter'' in U.S. presidential elections," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 1(5), pages 1-8.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-04a10004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/EB/2004/Volume1/EB-04A10004A.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fair, Ray C, 1978. "The Effect of Economic Events on Votes for President," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 60(2), pages 159-173, May.
    2. Swank, O H, 1993. "Popularity Functions Based on the Partisan Theory," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 75(4), pages 339-356, April.
    3. Stephen E. Haynes & Joe A. Stone, 1994. "Why Did Economic Models Falsely Predict A Bush Landslide In 1992?," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 12(2), pages 123-130, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:1:y:2004:i:5:p:1-8 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. E Goulas & C Kallandranis & A Zervoyianni, 2019. "Voting Behaviour and the Economy: Evidence from Greece," Economic Issues Journal Articles, Economic Issues, vol. 24(1), pages 35-58, March.
    3. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2016. "Voting and Popularity," CREMA Working Paper Series 2016-08, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    4. Stephen Haynes & Joe Stone, 2008. "A disaggregate approach to economic models of voting in U.S. presidential elections: forecasts of the 2008 election," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(28), pages 1-11.
    5. Faust, Jon & Irons, John S., 1999. "Money, politics and the post-war business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 61-89, February.
    6. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2008:i:28:p:1-11 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Wilko Letterie & Otto Swank, 1997. "Electoral and partisan cycles between US economic performance and presidential popularity: a comment on Stephen E. Haynes," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(12), pages 1585-1592.
    8. Ray C. Fair, 1996. "Econometrics and Presidential Elections," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 89-102, Summer.
    9. Stephen E. Haynes & Joe A. Stone, 1994. "Why Did Economic Models Falsely Predict A Bush Landslide In 1992?," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 12(2), pages 123-130, April.
    10. Antoine Auberger, 2020. "The impact of economic and political factors on popularity for France (1981- 2017)," Working Papers hal-02501677, HAL.
    11. Fox, Gerald & Phillips, Earl N., 2003. "Interrelationship between presidential approval, presidential votes and macroeconomic performance, 1948-2000," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 411-424, September.
    12. Ray C. Fair, 1994. "The Effect of Economic Events on Votes for President: 1992 Update," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1084, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    13. Hibbs, Douglas A, Jr, 2000. "Bread and Peace Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 104(1-2), pages 149-180, July.
    14. Rodrigo Martins & Francisco Veiga, 2013. "Economic voting in Portuguese municipal elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 155(3), pages 317-334, June.
    15. Erik Snowberg & Justin Wolfers & Eric Zitzewitz, 2007. "Partisan Impacts on the Economy: Evidence from Prediction Markets and Close Elections," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(2), pages 807-829.
    16. Jeroen Klomp, 2020. "Election or Disaster Support?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(1), pages 205-220, January.
    17. repec:cup:judgdm:v:15:y:2020:i:5:p:863-880 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Sinha, Pankaj & Verma, Aniket & Shah, Purav & Singh, Jahnavi & Panwar, Utkarsh, 2020. "Prediction for the 2020 United States Presidential Election using Machine Learning Algorithm: Lasso Regression," MPRA Paper 103889, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 31 Oct 2020.
    19. Janet Pack, 1987. "The political policy cycle: Presidential effort vs. presidential control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 54(3), pages 231-259, August.
    20. Ali T. Akarca & Aysit Tansel, 2003. "Economic Performance and Political Outcomes: An Analysis of The 1995 Turkish Parliamentary Election Results," Working Papers 0321, Economic Research Forum, revised Jul 2003.
    21. Fidrmuc, Jan, 2000. "Political support for reforms: Economics of voting in transition countries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(8), pages 1491-1513, August.
    22. Boryana Dimitrova, 2000. "An Empirical Model of Voting Behavior in the Bulgarian Parliamentary Elections of 1994," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 44(2), pages 71-77, October.
    23. Sinha, Pankaj & Srinivas, Sandeep & Paul, Anik & Chaudhari, Gunjan, 2016. "Forecasting 2016 US Presidential Elections Using Factor Analysis and Regression Model," MPRA Paper 74618, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 17 Oct 2016.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A1 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-04a10004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.