Economic Voting in Gubernatorial Elections

There is a large literature on economic voting in the United States, which shows that the economy matters in presidential and congressional elections. Puzzlingly, however, the state politics literature has failed to find clear evidence for economic voting in gubernatorial elections. In this study, I use population-based datasets of state and county-level economic conditions from 1969-2016 to examine the effect of the state and local economies in gubernatorial elections. I find strong evidence that the state and local economies have an important effect on gubernatorial elections. In addition, I find some evidence that voters reward or punish gubernatorial candidates for the performance of the local economy based on whether they share the president’s party. Overall, my findings show that there are strong electoral incentives for governors to pursue policies that grow the state economy. ∗Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, [email protected].