Using panel surveys conducted in Great Britain before and after the 1997 general election, we examine the relationship between voting behavior and post-election economic perceptions. Drawing on cognitive consistency theory, we argue that those who voted for the newly-elected Labour government perceived the past state of the British economy under the Tory government more negatively and its future state under Labour more positively than they had prior to casting their ballot. This indicates that voters seek to reduce inconsistencies between their vote choice and evaluations of the economy by bringing their attitudes in line with the vote they cast in the election. It also means that voters' post-election economic perceptions are endogenous to their voting decision. This finding has two major implications: First, cross-sectional models of economic voting are likely to overestimate the effect of economic perceptions on the vote. Second, the endogeneity of economic perceptions may compromise the quality of economic voting as a mechanism for democratic accountability.
Acknowledgements
This research was conducted in part with the help of NSF Grant SES-9818525 to Chris Anderson. The data come from ICPSR Study No.2616. The original collector of the data, ICPSR, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for uses of this collection or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses. The data were analyzed with the help of the STATA econometric software. We would like to thank Andrew LoTempio and Ajla Dzudza for their help on this project. Many thanks also to Kathleen O'Connor for her invaluable advice.
Address all correspondence to : Professor of Political Science, Center on Democratic Performance (CDP), Department of Political Science, Binghamton University, SUNY, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA. E-mail: cdp@binghamton.edu