IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2408.05223.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economic Struggles and Inflation: How Does that affect voting decision?

Author

Listed:
  • Muhammad Hassan Bin Afzal

Abstract

Economic hardships significantly affect public perception and voting intentions in general elections. The primary focus of my study is to capture the degree of influence that individual economic hardships have on their voting. I utilize the ANES 2024 Pilot Study1 Survey dataset and introduce a novel composite Inflation Behavior Index (IBR) that captures individuals' cumulative economic and cost of living experience. To that effect, the primary objectives of the current study are threefold: first, to develop a composite economic behavior index from available data and variables to capture the overall economic experience of U.S. individuals due to ongoing inflation; second, to examine how this economic behavior impacts political engagement and voting behavior utilizing appropriate and fitting mathematical models; and finally which specific personal experiences and perceptions about economy and cost of living likely to revoke party loyalty in upcoming U.S. presidential election. My study finds that increased personal economic struggles (pocketbook voting) due to inflation make it more likely for individuals to express an intention to vote against the Incumbent even if the Incumbent is from their self-identified political party. Conversely, having a negative perception of the national economy (sociotropic voting) is less likely to revoke party loyalty in the upcoming General election. In simpler terms, voters are more likely to vote along party lines even if they perceive their party (the Incumbent) is not handling the economy and cost of living well.

Suggested Citation

  • Muhammad Hassan Bin Afzal, 2024. "Economic Struggles and Inflation: How Does that affect voting decision?," Papers 2408.05223, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2408.05223
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.05223
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2408.05223. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.