No wo/man is an island. A social theory of economic voting.

Background

The project No wo/man is an island. A social theory of economic voting argues that previous research has had a too narrow view of what personal economy is – an individual is almost never entirely dependent on his/her own income or assets. By developing a social theory of economic voting, we integrate the economic status of one’s social ties to the model of economic voting. The specific aims are to identify and test how 1) how an individual’s relative socioeconomic status within a couple matters for vote choice, 2) how individuals’ vote choices are affected by economic shocks within their socioeconomic network and 3) how the status of the socioeconomic network cushions or reinforces the relationship between individual economic shocks and vote choice.

Novel empirical approach

To reach the aims, we, the researchers behind this application, will use a novel empirical approach and combine high quality survey data from the Swedish National Election Study 2018 and 2022 with data from administrative registers (Statistics Sweden), including information about the economic status of respondent’s social ties. Using causal identification models and statistical analysis, we can, in a convincing and precise way, test hypotheses about the role of socioeconomic networks for economic voting. The results from the project will be decisive for our understanding of how political opinion is formed and changed and how this matter for voter’s party choice.