THE EFFECT OF ECONOMIC EVENTS ON VOTES FOR PRESIDENT: 1984 Update

ln previous work I have developed an equation explaining votes for president in the United States that seems to have remarkable explanatory paver. The purpose of this paper is to update this equation through the 1984 election and then use it to predict the 1988 election. The history of the equation is as follows. The original work was &one in 1976 and published in Fair (1978). In this work I tested a fairly wide range of theories of voting behavior, from the sophisticated and well informed voters of Stigler (1973) to the somewhat naive voters of Kramer (1971). The two main issues examined regarding the effect of economic events on votes for president were (1) how far back voters look in evaluating the economic performance of the two parties and (2) w a economic variables voters use in rh t evaluating performance. The results supported the view that voters look only at the economic performance of the current party in power, not also, for example, the performance of the opposition party the last ti e it was in ?a power. The most important economic variable was tbe growth te of real per capita GNP somewhere between about six months and a year before the election. The data did not appear to be sufficient to distinguish between the time periods ofsix months, nine months, and a year before the election. The rate of inflation in the two year period before the election had a small (negative) effect on votes for president, althougb it was not statistically significant. The sample period used for this work was 1916-1976, consisting of 16 elections. In Fair (1982) the equation was updated through the 1980 election. From