Economics and Electorates: The Subjective Economy of British Party Support

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9600018 Stewart Research on the political economy of party support long has been characterized by conflicting theoretical perspectives and sharp empirical disagreements about the significance of various explanatory variables. In particular, two long-standing debates have focused on the roles played by egocentric as opposed to sociotropic, and retrospective versus prospective, evaluations in the formulation of party support decisions. Intertwined with these debates is a general disagreement over whether the evaluation which exerts the largest effect can be interpreted within a rational choice framework. Recognizing that comparative investigations can point in the direction of resolving these controversies, this research continues the administration of three Consumer Confidence questions in monthly British Gallup surveys (N=1,000). Since the series were to be terminated in August, 1995, this research gathers data for 20 consecutive months (until April, 1997). Also on a monthly basic, the data will be provided to the principal investigator and reported in the Gallup Political and Economic Index for the purposes of many other scholars interested in the development and testing of a variety of alternative models relevant to the subjective economy of party support. These data will be amenable to advanced, aggregate level econometric modeling procedures and sophisticated individual-level techniques. This is a data resource that will be widely used by the social science research community interested in the topic. ***