Economic Voting in Chilean Presidential Elections
Antonio M. Jaime-Castillo*, José Luis Sáez-Lozano† and Leonardo
Letelier‡
University of Granada (Spain) and University of Chile (Chile)
ABSTRACT
Since 1966, when Key proposed the reward-punishment rule, the analysis of economic voting has been
tuning a theory that explains voter’s decisions as a function of the economic conditions. In this paper we
present a model of accountability and economic voting, in which voters are assumed to be risk-neutral
and uncertain about the prospective economic situation of the country. Voter’s decision is based upon an
additively separable utility function, which has two elements: the prospective sociotropic evaluation and
the ideological distance between the voter and the candidates. Voter’s goal consists in choosing the
candidate who maximizes the expected utility of his decision.
By using a pooled data set from
presidential elections that took place in Chile in 1993, 1999-2000 and 2005-2006, we conclude that both
the electoral context as well as and the leadership are the exogenous factors considered have major
impact over the electoral behavior. We also find that the economic voting of the Chileans is sophisticated,
rational and heterogeneous.
Keywords: Responsibility, government, voter, economy, utility function, decision theory.
JEL Classification: A12, C70
*
Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Granada, Spain. E-mail: amjaime@ugr.es.
Associate Professor of Applied Economics and Research Fellow at the Instituto de Desarrollo Regional,
University of Granada, Spain. E-mail: josaez@ugr.es.
‡
Professor of Government at the University of Chile, Chile. E-mail: lletelie@uchile.cl.
†
1
1. Introduction
Downs pointed out that vote choices are mostly a prospective decision, given
that the goal of the voter is maximize her expected utility, choosing the best candidate.
The problem arises when the voter does not have perfect information, and then she has
to use past information to form her expectations about the economic future of the
country. From this point of view, economic voting plays a twofold role: it produces
government’ accountability and makes possible to select the best candidate running for
office (Fearon, 1999). However, any model of economic voting has to take into account
other elements that affect vote choices (ideological and partisan preferences, candidates
and leadership …).
In this paper we propose a model of economic voting for a rational voter, riskneutral, who is uncertain about the prospective economic situation of the country and
has ideological preferences (she takes into account her ideological distance with respect
to party platforms). Voter’ goal is to vote for the party that maximizes her expected
utility: she will vote for the incumbent if she thinks the incumbent is more able to
improve the national economy than the challenger, but it is also possible that voter do
not choose the most capable party if the ideological distance between her and this party
is large enough to override the “ability advantage”. Following this argument, we derive
two corollaries: (1) if the voter is located at the same ideological distance from each and
every contending party, her voting decision will depend only on the expected economic
situation under the rule of each party; (2) if the voter thinks economic conditions will be
the same, irrespective of the party in power, she will vote for the party she feels closer
to in terms of her ideological preferences.
This accountability model will be tested in the Chilean presidential elections in
1993, 1999-2000, and 2005-2006. Using post-election surveys we built a grouped-data
panel, consisting of three waves (one for each electoral process). After running several
heteroskedasticity tests, in order to know whether there are significant differences
between the three sub-samples, we found that errors are constant across sub-samples.
Then we ran a binomial logit model with the aim of finding out how exogenous factors
affect voting decisions: egotropic and sociotropic economic expectations, sophistication
levels and voters’ heterogeneity. We also included other explaining variables: the
2
electoral context of each election, the impact of candidates’ leadership, and the
interaction term between these variables.
This paper has six main sections. In the following section we revise the
contributions of the economic voting theory and responsibility attribution. Then we
present our theoretical model and the econometric specification (section 3). After that,
we analyze the data and variable we used in this study (section 4). In the fifth section we
run several statistical tests and discuss main findings from our estimates in Chilean
electorate. In the last section we discuss some implications of these findings for the
research in economic voting and propose some future research questions.
2. Accountability and economic voting
During the last four decades there have been published lots of studies that
analyze the decision of economic voting. In 1966, Key proposed the hypothesis of the
reward-punishment rule: voters implicitly make the government responsible for the
economic conditions of the country, and then they will vote for the party in office if
they approve the way the government handled the economy; otherwise they will vote
for one of the challenger parties. Nevertheless, after a survey of the literature about
economic voting we will found a variety of contending theories: retrospective and
prospective voting, egotropic and sociotropic voting, political sophistication, voter’
heterogeneity, clarity in the attribution of responsibility …
The initial formulations of the hypothesis of clarity of responsibility and of the
reward-punishment rule are compatible with the theory of retrospective voting.
Following Fiorina (1981), to determine whether the incumbents have had good or bad
economic outcomes, voters need only compute changes in their own welfare. Later on,
Lewis-Beck (1988) mixed the responsibility hypothesis and retrospective evaluation of
the national economy, reformulating the theory of retrospective economic voting: voters
make the government responsible for the economic conditions because they evaluate
government performance through a retrospective lens.
What happens when rational voters not only care about the past but also form
their own expectations about the economic conditions for the future? Fearon (1998),
Kuklinski and West (1981), and Lewis-Beck and Skalaban (1989) used the model of
rational expectations to explain the final decision of these sophisticated voters. They
3
suggested that economic voting also has a prospective feature. Elections not only
produce accountability but also serve as a device to select the best candidate (incumbent
or challenger). Whether the prospective voter is a sophisticated individual or not, such a
formulation for a theory of electoral behavior suggests that only a minority or elite of
voters is well-informed and has good knowledge of the country’s economic and political
conditions. Hence, Luskin (1987), Sniderman (1993) and Sniderman, Brody and Tetlock
(1991) argued that there are different levels of sophistication in voters’ decisions, from
extremely high sophistication to absolute ignorance. Empirically, Gómez and Wilson
(2001) found what they call a heterogeneous level of sophistication in voting: egotropic
voters are more sophisticated than sociotropic ones. While sociotropic voters assume
that the government is the only agent responsible, egotropic voters believe that the
economy is affected by many other factors and economic forces, many of which are
beyond of government control.
Is economic voting retrospective or prospective?1 According to Downs (1957),
voting is mainly prospective, since the goal of every voter is to maximize her expected
utility by choosing the best candidate: incumbent or challenger. However, when the
information available is imperfect, rational voters will use information about the past to
form their own expectations about the future in order to minimize risk. In contrast to
Downs, Lewis-Beck (1988) did not find an empirical connection between retrospective
and prospective voting.
Mackuen, Erikson and Stimson (1992) distinguished two types of voters who
cohabit in every political system: the “peasants”, who are myopic and retrospective
when it comes to making their electoral choices; and the “bankers”, who follow the
model of rational expectations and hence are prospective. On the other hand, Dorussen
and Palmer (2002) have distinguished different kinds of voters according to their levels
of sophistication. Less-sophisticated voters have low interest in economic policy and a
low level of knowledge about the national economy (Suzuki, 1991). They use
retrospective evaluation as an informative shortcut that can help them to decide what to
vote for. Highly sophisticated voters do not use retrospective evaluation as a device to
minimize the cost of the information needed to make an electoral choice, but they
1
Keech (1995) analyzes the debate about retrospective and prospective voting and its implications in
great detail.
4
incorporate this information to form their own expectations about the future of the
national economy.
Some authors state that responsibility attribution is the final outcome of a
cognitive process that has a double aim: sociotropic and egotropic. Kinder and Kiewiet
(1979) pointed out that economic voting is sociotropic, that is, voters reward (or punish)
the government for the general economic conditions of the country. The main criticism
of this argument is that it assumes that voters have complete and perfect information, an
assumption difficult to sustain empirically. Therefore, the “pocketbook hypothesis” (or
egotropic economic voting) became the main paradigm: personal or family economic
conditions are the main forces driving the reward-punishment rule (Nannestad and
Paldam, 1997). Abramovitz, Lanoue and Ramesh (1988) have shown that educational
level is a contextual factor of egotropic voting, which affects the way voters blame
political institutions for their personal or family economic conditions: individuals who
have a higher educational level are more capable of distinguishing between the
influence of economic policies and other changing factors that affect their own welfare.
By the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the
theory of heterogeneity revitalized economic voting theory and is now having powerful
impact on this research program. At the beginning of the eighties, Weatherford (1983)
concluded that less-educated voters react to changes in the economic situation of the
country more strongly. From another point of view, Hibbs (1977; 1987) analyzed the
asymmetries in different groups’ attitudes: left-wing voters are more worried about
unemployment, while right-wing voters have stronger aversion to inflation. Similar
results emerge if we compare the attitudes of low-income versus high-income voters.
On the other hand, Lin (1999) stressed that patterns in economic voting can differ from
one country to another, from one person to another, and even over time. Duch, Palmer
and Anderson (2000), and Duch and Palmer (2002) formally state that differences
between groups of voters, especially in the search for and processing of information,
generate systematic biases in evaluating economic conditions.
The nineties saw the first wave of studies in which it was assumed that voters do
not always attribute responsibility correctly (the hypothesis of clarity in responsibility)2.
If government responsibility is clear, economic voting will increase electoral
2
Anderson (1995), Pacek and Radcliff (1995), Whitten and Palmer (1999), Nadeau and others (2002),
etc. analyze the hypothesis of clarity in responsibility.
5
expectations for the party in government; however, if voters are not sure about
responsibility, the incumbent will not benefit from economic voting. These authors thus
classify the political system into two groups: those in which the responsibility of the
party (or parties) in power is clear (i. e. the case of one-party government); and those in
which there is no clear responsibility (i. e. coalition governments).
In contrast to Powell and Whitten, Samuels (2004) argues that, in presidential
regimes, one must distinguish between attributing responsibility in presidential and
legislative elections. Linz (1990; 1994), in his analysis of the legitimacy of presidential
systems, concludes that this regime of political organization tends to confuse voters
when it comes to assigning responsibility, since the apparent autonomy of the President
with respect to the legislative branch almost prevents him from having any
responsibility. Persson, Roland and Tabellini (1997), Samuels and Shugart (2003),
Shugart and Carey (1992) cast some doubts on Linz’s conclusions, since voters could
assign the responsibility to both the president and the legislative branch.
What can cause the voter to assign government responsibility incorrectly?
Samuels (2004) argues that three factors could explain this phenomenon: (1) the lack of
any political party capable of competing with the parties that support the executive in
Parliament, (2) the strategies implemented by governments to hide information about
their own responsibility, and (3) the president’s decision not to run for reelection or to
have any connection with any of the candidates running for office, so that voters cannot
punish him in any way. Other empirical studies emphasize the role of contextual factors
other than strictly institutional ones. Dorussen and Palmer (2002) claim the necessity of
including the electoral circumstances as another variable that affects individual voter
decisions. Norpoth (2002), on the other hand, analyzes how the specific institutional
circumstances in which presidential elections take place in the U.S. affect voting
decisions.
How good is the model of economic voting? In a recent review of the economic
voting theories, Anderson (2007) concludes that when the link between economy and
election outcomes exists, it is contingent, depending on both institutional and
psychological factors. Anderson starts casting several doubts on the fact that there exists
an objective state of the economy that voters can accurately perceive. Furthermore, even
if in the absence of informational limitations and biases, “evaluations would not
6
translate into a vote for or against the government unless citizens attribute responsibility
for economic conditions to the incumbent government” (Anderson, 2007: 280-281).
Studies about endogenous evaluations of economic performance point out that
these evaluations are not independent of political partisanship. Evans and Andersen
(2006) suggest that, besides economic theories of voting arguing that voters’ decisions
are driven by economic performance of governments, inferences about the direction of
causality are highly controversial. According to their view, economic evaluations are
endogenous variables, which could reflect political loyalties, cognitive dissonance, or
the role of parties as a source of information for voters. Furthermore, in a relatively
stable economy, as it is typically the case in western democracies, “partisan
‘contamination’ of voters’ understanding of economic performance is much more
likely” (Evans and Andersen, 2006: 195).
Brennan and Hamlin (1998) contend instrumental accounts of voting in rational
choice tradition, arguing that, given the negligible probability of being decisive, the
typical voter does not care very much about the consequences of voting. These
“expressive voters” derive utility mainly from the fact of voting for the favorite party.
Therefore, voting accordingly with ideological preferences is rational! According to the
spatial theory of voting, voters decide whom to vote for as a function of their
ideological preferences and those of the parties. In this framework, voters and parties
are characterized by their ideological preferences (or ideal political platforms), and the
decision problem the voter faces is conceived so as to minimize some function of the
distance between her ideological position and that of the voted political option.
Therefore, the voter will vote for parties or candidates closer to her ideological position
in terms of the political platforms they propose (Enelow and Hinich, 1984).
3. A model of accountability and voting decision with uncertainty
When a voter has to choose between different political platforms, she is facing a
decision under uncertainty, given that she does not know the consequences of different
actions she can undertake. In this vein, a prospective voter, who has to decide how to
vote, does not know how economic situation will evolve in the future, because of the
uncertainty about the candidate in power and the economic policies to be implemented
by the government. The main source of electoral uncertainty is the lack of information
7
about candidate’s ability in handling the economy. Then, based upon this limited
information, the voter will have to assign some positive probabilities to each and every
possible state of the economy under the rule of each candidate.
If we assume that voters assign the responsibility for the economic conditions to
the government (there is no uncertainty about responsibility attribution), we can predict
that they will follow the reward-punishment rule under imperfect information. However,
it could be the case that voters will deviate from this rule if they (and the parties) have
ideological preferences. Frequently, voters strongly committed to some ideological
principles will discard available information about the state of the economy and will
vote for the candidate they feel closer, even if that candidate is not good enough in
handling the economy. Moreover, this is still rational according to Brennan and Hamlin
(1998), since the pleasure of supporting my own candidate easily overcomes the impact
of my vote on the final outcome of the election. This is the reason why a realistic model
of economic voting has to consider the effect of ideological preferences over voting
decisions at the individual level.
The model we propose here is based upon five assumptions: (1) voters have
incomplete information about the national economy and other relevant variables
(Iyengar, 1990); (2) economic policies of the candidate in power have an impact on the
state of the economy, although voters can not fully anticipate the consequences of each
economic policy; (3) voters and parties that take part in the electoral process have
ideological preferences; (4) voters will prefer to maintain in power those parties that
handle the economy well and throw the inefficient ones out; and (5) voters will prefer to
vote for parties they feel closer. Hence, at the individual level, voting decisions are the
results of balancing all these requirements.
For the shake of simplicity, let us suppose that voter i has to choose between
incumbent j and challenger k, given that j≠k. There are two possible states of the
national economy in the future: s1 (economic conditions will improve) and s0 (economic
conditions will worsen). The voter will get utility ui(s1) if the economy is better off in
the future and utility ui(s0) if the economy is worse off, and we assume that ui(s1) >
ui(s0). Given the uncertainty about the state of the economy, and the fact that the state of
the economy depends to some extent on the economic policies undertaken by the
candidate in government, voter will assign some positive probabilities to each state of
the economy, conditional on the candidate in office.
8
Let pij be the probability that voter i assigns to the state s1 under the rule of the
incumbent candidate j. Then 1 – pij will denote the probability that voter i assigns to the
state s0 under the rule of the incumbent candidate j. Similarly, under the rule of the
challenger candidate k, we can define probabilities pik and 1 – pik for s1 and s0,
respectively. In the first case, voters have information about the ability of the candidate
in power in handling the economy, so they are able to compute subjective probabilities
about the state of the economy pij (Downs, 1957). However, if the challenger does not
have previous record of being in power, voters will need to use some other available
information3 in order to compute pik.
At the same time, voter’ utility also depends on the ideology of the candidate in
government, given that different parties will pursue different goals, depending on its
ideological preferences. Let us suppose that before the election takes place (i. e. during
the campaign), incumbent and challenger reveal their ideological preferences, placing
themselves along the ideological space c. Let cj be the position of incumbent candidate j
and ck the position of challenger k. On the other hand, voter i also has her own
ideological preferences, denoted by her position along the ideological space ci.
Assuming that voter’ utility decreases with the distance between her and the candidate
in power, we now denote the disutility of the distance between the voter and the
incumbent by ui(–d(ci, cj)), and the disutility of the distance between the voter and the
challenger by ui(–d(ci, ck))4.
We will introduce two additional assumptions at this point: (1) ui(s) is
independent form ui(–d), and therefore, we assume that utility function is additively
separable: ui(s, –d) = ui(s) + ui(–d); and (2) : ui(s, –d) is homogeneous of degree 1, that
is: ui(s, –d) = ui(s, –d), being  > 0.
If the incumbent j wins the election, the utility of voter i will be given by:
EUi (j) = EUi (pij s1 + (1– pij) s0 – d(ci, cj))
(1a)
3
For instance, political programs, experiences of being in office at other levels of government (in the case
of federal states) …
4
If the utility of voter i depends only on her ideological distance with respect to each of the competing
parties, then her voting decision is given by:
 

max ui  c j , ck   ui min d  ci , c j  , d  ci , ck 
where
max ui  c j , ck  is the utility that voter i gets from voting for the party she feels closer to.
9
Symmetrically, if the challenger k wins the election, the utility of voter i will be
given by:
EUi (k) = EUi (pik s1 + (1– pik) s0 – d(ci, ck))
(1b)
Definition 1: The aim of voter i, rational and risk-neutral, is to maximize her
expected utility EUi (j, k) voting for the incumbent j or the challenger k:
max EU i  j, k   max EU i  j  , EU i  k 
(2)
From this definition, we derive the following proposition:
Proposition 1. Rational and risk-neutral voter i will vote for the incumbent if and
only if EUi (j) ≥ EUi (k); that is, if (pij – pik) (s1 – s0) ≥ d(ci, cj) – d(ci, ck) ↔ d(ci,
ck) – d(ci, cj) ≥ (pik – pij) (s1 – s0).
Dem: see Appendix A.1.
Voter i will vote for the incumbent if and only if the two following conditions
are met: (1) she thinks that the incumbent is more efficient than the challenger in
handling the economy; and (2) the perceived difference in ability between the two
competing parties overcomes the ideological distance between the voter and the
candidate. Otherwise, the voter will vote for the challenger. Following Downs (1957), if
the ideological polarization between parties is relatively low and the voters are normally
distributed over the ideological space, then voting decisions will be mainly determined
by the relative ability of the contending parties in handling the economy.
From proposition 1 we can derive the following corollary, when the voter is
equidistant between the two parties:
Corollary 1a. If |d(ci, cj)| = |d(ci, ck)|, voter i, rational and risk-neutral, will vote
for the incumbent j if and only if pij ≥ pik.
Dem: see Appendix A.2.
10
From proposition 1 we can derive other corollary, when the voter assigns the
same probability of success in handling the economy to both parties:
Corollary 1b. If pij = pik, voter i, rational and risk-neutral, will vote for the
incumbent j if and only if d(ci, ck) ≥ d(ci, cj).
Dem: see Appendix A.3.
The utility a voter i obtains from the prospective state of the economy and the
ideological distance between her and the candidate for whom she votes is not an
observable outcome. However, we will be able to determine whether the expected utility
of voting for the candidate in power EUi(j) is lower or higher than the expected utility of
voting for the challenger EUi(k). We can now specify the following model to explain
voting decisions:
vi  1, if
EU i  j   UEi  k 
 3
 0, if
EU i  j   UEi  k 
where vi denotes an endogenous variable that takes the value 1 when voter i votes for
the candidate in government and value 0 when she votes for the challenger.
From equation (3) we can compute the probability of a voter voting for the
candidate in power P(vi = 1) as:
P  vi  1  P  EU i  j   UEi  k   =F(Xi  )+ i
 4
where F is the cumulative distribution function associated with the process of making
an electoral decision; Xi is the vector containing the explanatory variables, which reflect
voters’ features and the attributes of the political parties among which voter i has to
choose; β is the vector of coefficient to be estimated; and εi is a stochastic error.
If we assume that cumulative distribution of εi is logistic (logit link), then we can
rewrite equation (4) as follows:
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P  vi  1   (X i  ) 
e Xi 
 Pi
1+e Xi 
 5 5
The interpretation of the vector estimates that β is made possible through the
partial derivate of Λ(.) with respect to kth explanatory variable Xki6:

 X ki 
X ki

 Pi 1  Pi 
(6)
4. Data and variables
Variables and data used to estimate the logit model (5) are from electoral
surveys carried out by the Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Contemporánea (CERC) of
Chile7. These surveys were done after presidential elections in 1993, 1999-2000, and
2005-20068. Sampling procedure is polietapic, stratified by clusters, with selection of
final sampling units by ‘random walks’. Surveys’ samples cover national population of
Chile, although in the last two elections only people from urban areas were interviewed.
Sample size is 1240 for the first survey, and bellow 1200 for the other two. After
recoding variables and cleaning the database, we ended up with a panel of 1881 Chilean
voters: 721 belong to presidential election of 1999, 588 to 1999-2000, and 502 to 20052006.
This panel is a matrix of grouped data, which has three waves, each of one
represents one presidential election covered in this paper. The dependent variable vi is a
dummy variable that measures electoral choices: it takes the value 1 if the voter votes
for the incumbent, that is, the presidential candidate of Concertación por la Democracia
(which is the political coalition in office), and the value 0 if she votes for the challenger.
We have included ten exogenous variables that reflect sociotropic and egotropic
motivations in economic voting, sophistication level of the Chilean voters, the impact of
voters’ heterogeneity, and other contextual factors from the political environment.
5
Λ(.) represents the logistic distribution function.
See Appendix B to know how marginal effects are computed for interaction terms.
7
Data are from the following surveys: 045 (March, 1994), and national omnibus in May, 2000, and April,
2006.
8
The survey 045 (March, 1994), was done after the first round of the presidential election, which took
place on December, 11, 1993. However, omnibus for 2000 and 2006 were done after the second round of
the presidential election, which took place on January, 16, 2001, and January, 15, 2005, respectively.
6
12
Moreover, we have specified two dummies variables, which along with the intercept
reflect the effect of the electoral context in voting choices. Lastly, since the Chilean
electoral system does not allow the President of the Republic to be reelected, and the
coalition in power has to nominate a candidate with no presidential experience, it means
that every incumbent candidate changes from one election to another. For this reason,
we added two interaction terms between candidates’ leadership and election
(presidential election of 1993 is the base category).
In order to take into account the effect of sociotropic motivations in economic
voting we have two explaining variables: the retrospective and prospective evaluation of
the economic situation in the country. The retrospective evaluation takes the value –1 if
the voter thinks that current situation is worse than one year before, 0 if it remains about
the same, and 1 if it is better off. Prospective evaluation takes the value –1 when voter
believes national economy is going to worsen in the years to come, 0 if she predicts no
changes, and 1 if she thinks it is going to improve.
Egotropic variables are coded in a similar way. We have considered two
variables: retrospective and prospective evaluation of familial economic situation. The
first one takes the value –1 if the voter thinks economic situation within the family is
now worse than a year ago, 0 if it remains about the same, and 1 if it is better off.
Prospective evaluation takes the value –1 when voter expects familial economy is going
to deteriorate in the years to come, 0 if she does not expect changes, and 1 if she
believes economic conditions will improve in the future.
Voters’ heterogeneity is measured through four different explaining variables:
ideology, household income, subjective social class and voter’ educational level.
Ideology ranges from –4 (far left) to 4 (far right) 9. Household income has been divided
by quartiles. The first quartile (those with the lower income level) takes the value 0, and
the last quartile (the richest group) takes the value 3. The subjective social class has
been classified into five groups: lower class (0), middle-low class (1), middle class (2),
middle-up class (3), and upper class (4). On the other hand, we have classified
educational levels into four groups: without formal education (0), basic education (1),
secondary education and technical studies (2), and tertiary education (University) (3).
9
If we assume that voters have accurate information about ideological preferences of each and every
presidential candidate, then dij and dik depend only on voter’ ideological position.
13
We have considered also two additional variables: age10 and employment status11.
However, these two variables were finally dropped from the model because statistical
reasons, given the fact that they were not significant at the individual level.
We needed to take into account the effect of political environment on individual
voting decision, since we are dealing with three different elections. In order to do that,
we have included two variables in the model: the evaluation of the last presidential term
and incumbent’ leadership. The first one ranges form –2, when the voter thinks the last
President handled things very badly, to 2, when she believes that the President did very
well. Leadership reflects incumbent’ approval12, and it ranges from 0 to 6. We could not
include other interesting variables, such as the evaluation of the national political
situation, given that is information is not present in the first wave.
Before we can estimate the model for the full panel of voters in the three
presidential elections, we need to test if there are significant differences between the
three sub-samples. If we find that voting decision are not homogenous across elections
(waves), then we will not be able to use this panel, since errors are not constant across
waves. Given that we had a sample large enough, we ran four heteroskedasticity tests:
Davidson and MacKinnon (1984)13, likelihood ratio, Lagrange multiplier, and Wald test
(Greene, 2003). These tests gave us contradictory results: from Davidson and
Mackinnon, likelihood ratio and Wald test, we could infer that the estimated binomial
logit (5) is homoskedastic. However, Lagrange multiplier suggests there is
heteroskedasticity across elections14.
5. Economic voting in the Chilean democracy
After the plebiscite held on October, 5, 1988, Chile held parliamentary elections
on December, 14, 1989. Patricio Aylwin, who was the candidate of Concertación por la
Democracia (CD)15, won the presidential office and had majority support in both
10
Age is equal or above 18 years. This is the legal age to vote in the Chilean electoral system.
This variable was coded as 0 (unemployed) and 1 (employed).
12
Unfortunately, subjects were not asked to evaluate other candidates’ leadership.
13
The Davidson and MacKinnon contrast is an adaptation from the heteroskedasticity test proposed by
Harvey (1976).
14
To perform likelihood ratio, Langrage multiplier and Wald tests we used reference value of Chi-Square
3.84.
15
CD is composed by the following parties: Partido Demócrata Cristiano (PDC), Partido por la
Democracia (PPD) y and Partido Socialista (PS).
11
14
chambers, the Cámara de los Diputados and the Senate. Huneeus (2005) sustains the
hypothesis that good economic policies of the governments presided by Aylwin, along
with his strong leadership, were the two key factors that explained the success of CD
through different electoral processes. From a economic point of view, French-Davis
(2003) point out that since the restoration of democracy in Chile, Aylwin’ government
has been one of the most successful period: interannual variation of GDP was 7.7 %,
unemployment rate was 7.3 %, exports of goods and services increased by an
interannual rate of 9.6 %, and the budget had a surplus of 1.6 % GDP. Nevertheless,
interannual inflation rate was 17.7 %16.
On December, 11, 1993, the second presidential election was held in Chile. The
CD’ candidate, Eduardo Frei, got 31.58 % of the popular vote, while the candidate of
Alianza por Chile17, Arturo Alessandri, got 24.39%. In parliamentary elections to the
lower chamber (Cámara de los Diputados), CD got 55.5 % of the vote (70 seats), while
Alianza got 36.6 % (50 seats). During Frei’ government there was a slow down in
economic growth: GDP only increased by a interannual rate of 5.4 %, exports of goods
and services remained stable, unemployment and investment rates increased slowly,
although inflation rate and budget surplus reduced steadily.
By the end of Frei’ government, Chilean economy was in recession. Third
presidential elections were held in a context of recessive economy18. Ricardo Lagos was
the candidate of CD, after a highly competitive battle for the nomination. Finally, the
socialist leader won to PDC’ candidate, Andrés Zaldívar. Huneeus (2005) point out
primaries inside CD weakened Lagos’ leadership as a presidential candidate, before the
final presidential election of 1999-2000 in front of Joaquín Levín, the candidate of
Alianza por Chile. That would explain why the CD’ leader got only 30,000 more votes
than the other candidate in the second round of presidential election held on January, 16,
2000.
Ricardo Lagos’ governments can be characterized by a good economic
performance: GDP grew up at an interannual rate of 4.3 %, average inflation rate got its
minimum (2.9 %), real wage index was increased to 138, and investment (as a share of
16
Some macroeconomic data are from the Banco Central de Chile and the Dirección de Presupuestos del
Ministerio de Hacienda (DIPRES).
17
Alianza por Chile is composed by the following parties: Renovación Nacional (RN), Unión de Centro
(UCC), Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI) and Partido del Sur.
18
In 1997 were held parliamentary elections. CD obtained the majority of seats in the lower chamber
(Cámara de los Diputados), although its share of vote was reduced with respect to 1993 elections.
15
GDP) was 24.5 %. Moreover, Lagos was the first Chilean President who maintains
budget equilibrium during his term (French-Davis, 2003). It is clear that this economic
environment had a positive impact over the electoral success of Michelle Bachellet, who
was the CD candidate in presidential elections of 2005-2006.
Furthermore, there were other political factors affecting positively Bachellet. For
the first time, since the restoration of democracy in Chile, Alianza had two different
candidates in the first round: Sebastián Piñera (RN) and Joaquín Levín (UDI), and they
ended up competing against each other and dividing their vote share. Alianza por Chile
reached election’ day weakened, because UDI and RN had a hard relationship since
2001, when Piñera announced his decision to run for President (Huneeus, 2005). On the
other hand, President Lagos broke his neutrality during presidential campaign and gave
his support to CD for continuing leading the national government (Huneeus, 2005).
However, Bachellet did not get the majority of vote in the first round of the presidential
elections and had to compete in the second round with Sebastián Piñera. In this final
stage, Bachellet won the office. Then, we can say that CD has won all elections
(presidential and parliamentary) held in Chile since the beginning of the new democratic
era, which is very uncommon in the “third wave” democracies (Huneeus, 2006).
The main aim of this section is to identify the factors that explain voting
decisions of Chileans in the last three presidential elections at the individual level: 1993,
1999-2000 and 2005-200619. There are two main reasons why we restrict our empirical
analysis to presidential elections. Firstly, Political Constitution of 1980 stated that the
executive has the competence of implementing national economic policies, being the
Ministry of Finance and Economy who has to set up the economic goals for the country
and implement the policies. According to Huneeus (2005:80), after restoration of civil
liberties in Chile and the first elections took place in 1989, there is a “presidential
system, with a high degree of centrality around the Chief of the State”. So voters will
attribute the responsibility for the economic conditions of the country to the President.
Secondly, Constitution of 1980 also stated that the President is chosen by direct
and majority voting, while parliamentary elections use plurality voting in binomial
districts: each district has two seats in the national Parliament. The first and the second
lists get each a seat. However, if the first list doubles the number of votes of the second
19
In the last two presidential elections there was a second round election, since none of the candidates got
the majority of votes in the first round.
16
list, the first one will get the two seats (Correa Rios and Noé Echevarría, 1994;
FLACSO, 2006). One of the consequences of this electoral system is the formation of
large electoral coalitions, given that there is a threshold to get a seat in parliamentary
elections20: CD, which includes Partido Demócrata Cristiano (PDC)21, Partido Socialista
(PS), Partido por la Democracia (PPD) and Partido Radical Socialdemócrata (PRSD);
and Alianza por Chile, which has two blocs: Partido del Sur and UDI, on the one hand,
and RN and UCC, on the other. As a result, there is a high competence between the
candidates of the same list in order to get the nomination. It is clear that this electoral
system makes difficult to assign the responsibility for the economic conditions to the
candidates running for office in the Parliament, even if they belong to the coalition in
government.
Logit estimates in Chilean presidential elections in 1993, 1999-2000 and 20052006 show that the global intercept of the model and the intercept for 1999-2000
elections are not significant at the individual level, although the intercept for 2005-2006
elections is statistically significant. On the other hand, the leadership of Ricardo Lagos
and Michelle Bachellet has a positive and significant effect over voting for the
incumbent. And the evaluation of government is also positive and significant. At the
same time, heterogeneity variables as well as sociotropic and egotropic evaluations of
economy (both retrospective and prospective) are significant (table 1).
[TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE]
Apart from significance test we ran three specification tests: (1) omission of
relevant variables, (2) significance of a subset of coefficients, and (3) subjacent
heteroskedasticity by groups of voters. To perform omission of relevant variables test
we compute likelihood ratio, Lagrange multiplier and Wald, including in the binomial
logit (5) other variables that reflect voter’ heterogeneity: age and employment status.
From tests we can infer that we are not having a specification error, as a result of not
including these two variables in the model22.
20
To get a seat in parliamentary elections one party must get 33.4% of valid vote.
PDC has proposed their own candidates in all the districts in both chambers (Cámara de los Diputados
and Senado).
22
Lagrange multiplier is equal to 6.01, when we included voter’ age as an explaining variable, and it is
equal to 5.91 when we included employment status. Wald statistic ranges from 0.20 (if we include voter’
21
17
In order to test the significance of subsets of explaining variables we perform the
Wald test. It can be shown that we can not omit the subset of variables that reflect
retrospective motivations (retrospective evaluation of the national economic situation)23.
At the same time, we can not omit from the model the subset of exogenous factors that
define a sociotropic24 and sophisticated25 voter. Neither the subset of voter’
heterogeneity26 nor the subset of political factors (evaluation of the government and
candidate’ leadership)27. Heteroskedasticity has been tested computing Lagrange
multiplier for the 44 groups of voters we can define using the whole set of independent
variables28. In none of the cases we can accept the hypothesis of heteroskedasticity29.
We also tested for collinearity in the model, computing Belsley’ condition number
(table 1). It can be inferred that there is not a problem of collinearity among regressors.
On the other hand, robustness of the estimates was tested using other parametric model
of discrete choice as a benchmark: the probit. The sign of individual coefficients is the
same in the two models, although the magnitude is not the same (table C.1 in Appendix
C). Dealing with the goodness of fit of the model, it can be said that likelihood ratio
index is equal to 0.34; estimated function predicts correctly 85.22 % of the sample; and
the intuitive prediction index for the value 0 of the dependent variable30, is equal to
44.77 % (table 1).
From table 2 we can conclude that Chilean voters are rational and sophisticated,
and they show a heterogeneous behavior. They are sophisticated, since when they have
to vote, they take into account both retrospective and prospective evaluation of the
national economy. For all the elections analyzed in this paper, incumbent’ voting
expectations increased as the evaluation of the economy improves. The probability of
age) to 1.48 (if we include employment status). Lastly, likelihood ratio ranges from 0.19 (in the case
voter’ age is included) to 1.41 (if we include employment status).
23
Wald is equal to 7.77, if we drop the evaluation of national economy (retrospective) from the model.
24
Wald is equal to 9.82, if we drop the evaluation of national economy (retrospective and prospective)
from the model.
25
Wald is equal to 29.21, if we drop the evaluation of both national and familial economy (retrospective
and prospective) from the model.
26
Wald test is equal to 12.53, if we drop from the model the following explaining variables: ideology,
household income, subjective social class and educational level.
27
Wald test is equal to 41.69, when we drop the evaluation of the last government and the evaluation of
the presidential candidate from the model.
28
We ran heteroskedasticity test by groups proposed by Davidson and MacKinnon. See Appendix B.
29
Lagrange multiplier ranges from 0.1377E-9 to 0.5678E-9.
30
Intuitive prediction index is computed for the value 0 of the dependent variable, given the fact that the
share of 1s (those who vote for the incumbent) is lower than 0.5.
18
voting for the incumbent increased (on average) 0.0314 and 0.036431 when there was an
infinitesimal improvement in the evaluation of the national economic situation,
retrospective and prospective, respectively (table 2). As it happens in other countries
(Jaime-Castillo and Sáez-Lozano, 2007), Chilean voters decide how to vote like they
were “bankers” more than like they were “peasants”.
[TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE]
Besides the fact that Chilean voters are sociotropic, they have mixed egotropic
motivations. Prospective evaluation of familial economic situation has no significant
impact on voting decision, but retrospective evaluation has. That is, the situation of
familial economy during the past affects voting decisions, but expectations about family
economic conditions do not have an impact (table 2). Voters may think that their own
economic success in the future is relatively independent from economic policies, and
they do not reward-punish the government depending on personal expectations.
As we have said, Chilean voters are fully rational according to economic voting
theories. Those who believed that economic conditions in the country were good
enough rewarded the incumbent, while those who think that economic conditions were
bad punish the incumbent candidate and vote for the challenger. In that sense,
presidential elections have produced government’ accountability, at least form an
economic point of view.
On the other hand, Chilean voters are also heterogeneous: their political
behavior and voting decisions also depend on socio-demographic factors. Given the fact
that the results of economic policies are not equally distributed across the whole
population we expect that socio-demographic variables (that reflects different positions
in the society) would affect voting decision. The main sources of heterogeneity we have
found in this paper are ideology, household income, subjective social class and
educational level. When the average Chilean voter moves slightly to the right, voting
probabilities for CD decreased 0.0760. On the contrary, if she moves to the left voting
probabilities for CD increased by the same factor. The three socio-demographic
variables have a similar effect on voter choices. When household income increased
31
Marginal effects have been computed at the mean value of each of the variables included in the
binomial logit model (5).
19
slightly, voters put themselves in a higher social class or had a higher educational level,
probabilities of voting for CD dropped by 0.0233, 0.033 and 0.0887, respectively (table
2).
One of the most relevant findings about Chilean voters’ behavior is the fact that
candidates’ leadership and political context of each election have been the most
important factors affecting voting decisions. As the evaluation of Bachellet and Lagos
improved, voting expectations for these two candidates increased by 0.5966 and 0.5220,
respectively, although marginal effect for Eduardo Frei was only 0.1196. The political
context has had a lower impact than leadership, tough higher than other variables. The
probability of voting for the incumbent increased (on average) by 0.1453 in 1999-2000
presidential elections and 0.1088 in 2005-2006 election, with respect to 1993 election.
That means that specific factors surrounding elections (not explicitly captured by the
model) has been a major force affecting final outcomes. The high impact of leadership
and political context on voting decision contrasts with the low impact of the evaluation
of the current government and its policies. Voting probabilities for the incumbent only
increased by 0.0362 as government’ evaluation slightly improved (table 2).
6. Conclusions
During the last four decades, the analysis of economic voting has built a model
that explains how rational voters make the governments accountable, assuming
implicitly that voters held the government responsible for the economic conditions in
the country. Empirical studies conducted along this time show that the economic theory
of voting explains reasonably well voting decision at the individual level. However
Dorussen and Palmer (2002), as well as other scholars, have critized the lack of
formalization in this research field, which affects even to their ontological grounds
(Anderson, 2007). With the aim of contributing to solve these theoretical and analytical
problems, in this paper we propose a model of accountability and voting decision,
which assumes a rational voter, risk-neutral, who is uncertain about the economic
situation in the future and also has ideological preferences, as well as the contending
candidates.
At the theoretical level, we have shown that uncertainty about the future of the
national economy and the ideological distance between the voter and the candidates are
20
two elements that affect voting decision. This conclusion holds, as long as we assume
that voters held the government responsible for economic conditions in the country.
Form proposition 1 we can infer that a voter will vote for the incumbent when
she believes that the incumbent is more competent than the challenger in handling the
economy of the country, and this difference in ability overcome the ideological distance
between the voter and the incumbent, as compared with the distance between the voter
and the challenger. On the contrary, she will vote for the challenger if the ideological
distance between her and the challenger is lower than the difference in ability to handle
the economy, or if she thinks the expected economic situation will be better under the
rule of the challenger. From this proposition, we derive two corollaries about
government’ accountability and voting decisions: (1) if the voter is equidistant (in
ideological terms) from the incumbent and the challenger, then she will vote for the
incumbent if she believes that economic conditions will better under the rule of the
incumbent; otherwise she will vote for the challenger; and (2) if the voter assign the
same probability to the fact of having good economic conditions in the country under
the rule of each candidate (incumbent and challenger), then she will vote for the
candidate she feel closer to in terms of ideological preferences.
Our empirical estimates from the logit model of economic voting, using a panel
for Chilean presidential elections in 1993, 1999-2000 and 2005-2006, show that
candidates’ leadership and political context of each election are the factors having the
highest impact on voting decision. Taking this apart, we can derive three main features
of the average Chilean voter in presidential elections: (1) she is sophisticated, given that
she made a sociotropic evaluation of the economy, using both retrospective and
prospective information; (2) she is fully rational, according to the economic voting
theory, since she uses a reward-punishment rule when it comes to decide whom to vote
for, and that rule depends on the economic performance of the government; that would
make the government accountable in front of citizens; and (3) she is heterogeneous in
her voting behavior, in the sense that her individual decision is affected by sociodemographic factors such as ideology, household income, subjective social class and
her educational level.
From our theoretical framework and our empirical findings, we can infer that the
theory of economic voting needs to focus on the knowledge of cognitive mechanisms in
place in voters’ reasoning and on the ongoing mental process. Given the selective and
21
restricted information individuals have when they must vote (Iyengar, 1990), it does not
seem to be a good idea to continue the task of developing models based on the
assumption of perfect rationality (Brennan and Hamlin, 1998). In the task of
understanding voters’ cognitive mechanisms, it would be more useful to apply models
that do not impose perfect rationality and that allow voters to make their decisions in a
sequential way, as is typical in bounded rationality models.
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26
APPENDICES
A. Demonstration of proposition 1 and corollaries 1a y 1b
A.1. Demonstration of proposition 1
From equation (2) it follows that voter i will vote for the incumbent if and only
if:
EU(j) ≥ EU(k)
(A.1.1)
Substituting equations (1a) and (1b) in the last equation, we get:
pij (s1)+ (1– pij) (s0) – d(ci, cj) ≥ pik (s1) + (1– pik) (s0) – d(ci, ck)
(A.1.2)
Operating in (A.1.2) we get:
(pij – pik) (s1 – s0) ≥ d(ci, cj) – d(ci, ck)
(A.1.3)
QED
A.2. Demonstration of corollary 1a
If |d(ci, cj)| = |d(ci, ck|, then equation (A.1.3) will be equal to:
(pij – pik) (s1 – s0) ≥ 0
(A.2.1)
Operating in the last equation we get:
pij (s1 – s0) ≥ pik (s1 – s0)
(A.2.2)
And dividing both sides by (s1 – s0),
pij ≥ pik
(A.2.3)
QED
A.3. Demonstration of corollary 1b
If pij = pik, then equation (A.1.3) will be equal to:
0 (s1 –s0) ≥ d(ci, cj) – d(ci, ck)
(A.3.1)
27
Operating in the last equation we get:
d(ci, ck) ≥ d(ci, cj)
(A.3.2)
QED
B. Computing marginal effects
Given the fact that we are concerned with the effect of regressors on voting
probabilities in this paper, and not only with he value of the index function, it is
convenient to compute marginal effects of an infinitesimal change in each regressor on
probabilities for a given level of independent variables. In order to compute marginal
effects we have used the following expression:
 E  v1|xi , X 
xi

  Xβ 
xi

e Xβ

1  e Xβ

2
i
(B.1)
In the case of a dichotomous variable, the marginal effect is computed as the
variation in the probability of vote experienced by a voter as the consequence of a
discrete change in the dichotomous variable from 0 to 1, according to the following
expression:
 E  v1|xi , X 
xi

  Xβ 
xi
(B.2)
However, this framework is inadequate if we try to compute marginal effects for
the interaction between two or more variables, as it is pointed out by Ai and Norton
(2003), given the fact that in non linear models, differently from the classical linear
regression model, the marginal effect of an interaction term is not equivalent to
  Xβ 
xij
. In non linear models, the marginal effect associated with an interaction term
has to be computed as the cross-derivative of the distribution function with respect to
each one of the variable that forms the interaction term, if both are continuous variables.
However, in this paper we are dealing with the case in which the interaction term is
28
built by a continuous variable and a dichotomous one. In this case, we have to compute
marginal effect according to the following expression:

  Xβ 
xi
   i  ij  f
x j
     x  
i
ij
i
j

 Xβ   i f   i xi  Xβ 
(B.3)
where f  Xβ     Xβ  .
The variance of the marginal effect associated wit the interaction term is
computed using Delta method, based upon an approximation through Taylor series
expansion (Ai and Norton, 2003):
   Ωˆ
ˆ
 2
    Xβ
ˆ 
βˆ  xi x j

2
ij



  
ˆ
 2
    Xβ
βˆ  xi x j

(B.4)


where Ω̂  is a consistent estimate of the variances and covariances matrix of the
vector of coefficients β̂ .
C. Heteroskedastic probit for economic voting en Chile
Tables C.1 and C.2 show estimates for heteroskedastic probit32, likelihood ratio,
Lagrange multiplier and Wald tests for presidential elections in Chile in 1999-200033,
and 2005-200634.
Table C.1
Heteroskedastic probit for economic voting in Chile
Dependent variable: Vote for incumbent
Exogenous variables
1999-2000
2005-2006
Coefficients
Coefficients
32
Table D.1 shows estimates for homoskedastic probit.
We are testing if there are differences between voters in the sub-sample of 1999-2000 presidential
elections and the rest of the sub-samples in the panel.
34
We are testing if there are differences between voters in the sub-sample of 2005-2006 presidential
elections and the rest of the sub-samples in the panel.
33
29
Intercept
Dummy presidential
election 1999-2000
Dummy presidential
election 2005-2006
National economic situation
(prospective)
National economic situation
(retrospective)
Family economic situation
(prospective)
Family economic situation
(retrospective)
Ideology
Government
Household income
Subjective social class
Education
Leadership
(Dummy presidential
election 19992000)*(Leadership)
(Dummy presidential
election 20052006)*(Leadership)
'
Log likelihood
-.2895
(.2978)
.7741b
(.3031)
-1.1795a
(.4388)
.0604
(.0427)
.1321a
(.0468)
.0409
(.0556)
.0949b
(.0393)
-.2034a
(.0311)
.0971a
(.0286)
-.0536b
(.0235)
-.1090a
(.0419)
-.2495a
(.0462)
.2977a
(.0586)
-.1192c
(.0708)
-.3095
(.3063)
-.7195c
(.4027)
.6983c
(.4178)
.0972c
(.0507)
.0538
(.0565)
.0385
(.0524)
.1167b
(.0520)
-.2287a
(.0311)
.0773a
(.0273)
-.0540b
(.0274)
-.1109a
(.0369)
-.2548a
(.0548)
.3076a
(.0595)
.2716a
(.0907)
.3553a
(.1000)
-.1220
(.0990)
-0.9912
(1.1212)
-654.4069
-0.9895
(1.0232)
-680.3277
Notes: The figures in brackets are the standard errors of estimated coefficients.
a, b and c denote significance levels ( 
 value ): 1%, 5% and 10%, respectively.
Table C.2
Heteroskedasticity tests for economic voting in Chile(*)
Presidential Elections 1999-2000
Likelihood ratio = 105.87
Lagrange multiplier = 167.42
Wald = 3.29
Presidential Elections 2005-2006
Likelihood ratio = 54.03
30
Lagrange multiplier = 50.47
Wald = 1.84
These statistics are computed from estimates for the homoskedastic and heteroskedastic probit models for
economic voting in Chile (tables C.1 and B.1, respectively).
D. Probit model for economic voting in Chile
Table D.1. shows estimates for probit model.
Table D.1
Probit model for economic voting in Chile
Exogenous variables
Dependent variable: Vote for incumbent
Coefficients
Intercept
Dummy presidential election
1999-2000
Dummy presidential election
2005-2006
National economic situation
(prospective)
National economic situation
(retrospective)
Family economic situation
(prospective)
Family economic situation
(retrospective)
Ideology
Government
Household income
Subjective social class
Education
Leadership
(Dummy presidential election
1999-2000)*(Leadership)
(Dummy presidential election
2005-2006)*(Leadership)
Sample size
-.1111
(.3227)
-.6092
(.4119)
-1.035b
(.4654)
.14680b
(.0676)
.1345c
(.0718)
.11888
(.0737)
.1234c
(.0673)
-.27689a
(.0281)
.15016a
(.0376)
-.0840b
(.0377)
-.1179b
(.0531)
-.3271a
(.0655)
.27071a
(.0627)
.2788a
(.0933)
.3396a
(.1063)
1881
Log likelihood
-707.3465
Constrained log likelihood
-1064.179
31
Chi-Square
713.6641
Degrees of freedom
14
Notes: The figures in brackets are the standard errors of estimated coefficients.
a, b and c denote significance levels ( 
 value ): 1%, 5% and 10%, respectively.
Table 1
Logit model for economic voting in Chile
Exogenous variables
Dependent variable: Vote for incumbent
Coefficients
Intercept
Dummy presidential election
1999-2000
Dummy presidential election
2005-2006
National economic situation
(prospective)
National economic situation
(retrospective)
Family economic situation
(prospective)
Family economic situation
(retrospective)
Ideology
Government
Household income
Subjective social class
Education
Leadership
(Dummy presidential election
1999-2000)*(Leadership)
(Dummy presidential election
2005-2006)*(Leadership)
Sample size
-.1276
(.5807)
-1.1054
(.7678)
-1.8844b
(.8262)
.24901b
(.1190)
.21432c
(.1286)
.19692
(.1295)
.25115b
(.1201)
-.5196a
(.0525)
.24727a
(.0671)
-.1588b
(.0662)
-.2288b
(.0946)
-.6064a
(.1193)
.4880a
(.1144)
.4968a
(.1745)
.6076a
(.1902)
1881
Log likelihood
-701.9283
Constrained log likelihood
-1064.179
Chi-Square
724.5005
Degrees of freedom
Belsley condition number
Likelihood ratio index
14
18.93425
0.34
32
Correct prediction
83.82%
Intuitive prediction index
72.55%
Notes: The figures in brackets are the standard errors of estimated coefficients.
a, b and c denote significance levels ( 
 value ): 1%, 5% and 10%, respectively.
Table 2
Marginal effects for economic voting in Chile
Dependent variable: Vote for incumbent
Exogenous variables
Marginal effect
Dummy presidential election 1999-2000
0.1453ª
(0.0233)
0.1088ª
(0.0217)
0.0364b
(0.0171)
0.0314c
(0.0178)
0.0288
(0.0188)
0.03674b
(0.0172)
-0.07601ª
(0.0069)
0.0362ª
(0.0103)
-0.0232b
(0.0104)
-0.0335b
(0.0139)
-0.0887ª
(0.0170)
0.1196a
(0.0110)
0.5220a
(0.1436)
Dummy presidential election 2005-2006
National economic situation (prospective)
National economic situation (retrospective)
Family economic situation (prospective)
Family economic situation (retrospective)
Ideology
Government
Household income
Subjective social class
Education
Leadership
(Dummy presidential election 19992000)*(Leadership)
Mean
0.3247
0.2772
0.5091
0.2209
0.5859
0.1927
-0.3407
0.2032
1.3269
1.4003
1.9100
4.4798
0.5966ª
(Dummy presidential election 2005(0.1636)
2006)*(Leadership)
Notes: The figures in brackets are the standard errors of estimated coefficients.
a, b and c denote significance levels ( 
-
 value ): 1%, 5% and 10%, respectively.
See Appendix B for the marginal effects formula.
33