Economic Hardship, Political Attitudes, and the 2012 Election
As part of our Election 2012 series, Lindsay Owens and David S. Pedulla examine the effects of the economic downturn on political attitudes. Owens, a graduate student at Stanford University, contributed to the RSF volume The Great Recession. Pedulla is a graduate student in sociology at Princeton University.
As Americans head to the ballot box, they will no doubt consider whether Obama or Romney will be better able to stimulate our sluggish economy. People were hit hard by the Great Recession and the aftershocks of economic distress are still forceful in the lives of individuals, families, and communities across the country. How will these economic hardships influence the choices that voters make at the ballot box in the upcoming election? While only time will be able to answer this question definitively, below we present findings from some of our research that hints at some possibilities for how economic hardship may (or may not) influence the political attitudes and voting behavior of the American electorate.
In research for the Russell Sage Foundation’s edited volume The Great Recession (2011), Owens (with her co-author, Lane Kenworthy) examined whether a variety of political and social attitudes change during and after economic recessions. On the whole, the findings from this study suggest that recessions do not seem to produce lasting shifts in Americans’ attitudes in the aggregate (Kenworthy and Owens 2011). They found little evidence of a “recession effect” on perceptions of fairness and opportunity in the economy, interests in helping the poor, confidence in government, or beliefs about the proper role of the government in regulating the economy. And, the changes that do occur tend to be temporary, reversing when the economy begins to recover. Given these macro-level findings, we might expect that the current economic situation will not affect political attitudes in any significant ways.
Attitudes Toward The Financial Sector
Although we have not seen wholesale shifts in political attitudes due to the recent recession, there are a few areas where attitudes have changed. Americans’ favorability toward banks and financial institutions has reached at least a forty year low. And, drawing on data from the The Gallup Poll and Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Owens (2012) finds that Americans’ attitudes toward the ethical practices of bankers and Wall Street stockbrokers are at historic lows. Social scientists don’t usually think these types of political attitudes matters in elections. But there is reason to think this election might be different. Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has strong ties to the financial sector. In particular, he was a founding partner of Bain Capital, a large private equity investment firm. The Obama campaign has certainly seized upon Romney’s connection with such an unpopular industry, running a variety of ads linking Romney to Bain Capital and in particular highlighting Bain Capital’s role in outsourcing jobs overseas. Although there is little evidence that these ads have had a lasting negative impact on Romney’s favorability, his ties to Bain Capital are certainly not an asset given the shift in Americans’ attitudes towards the financial sector. The upshot is that Americans’ overwhelming negativity toward financial institutions and those individuals who work in them may pose a problem for the Romney campaign.
Unemployment and Political Attitudes
Importantly, the aforementioned research looks at changes in aggregate public opinion and political attitudes. However, examining political attitudes at this level can mask important differences between groups. In particular, those individuals who have suffered the most deleterious effects of the recession may respond differently than those individuals who were not hit as hard. In some of our recent research, we wanted to explore whether people who became unemployed during the recession – a direct experience of economic decline – changed their attitudes toward income redistribution and aid to the poor. In our recent working paper (Owens and Pedulla 2012), we find that individuals who become unemployed actually do increase their preferences for government redistribution from rich to poor and want more government assistance for the poor. We also find that those individuals who lost a significant amount of household income between 2006 and 2010 (either by losing $30,000 in annual household income, losing 20 percent of their household income, or moving from above to below the $37,500 threshold in annual household income) show an increase in their desire for government redistribution. All told, the marginal effect of this constituency is likely not large enough to swing an election. However, given that Democrats tend to be associated with more generous welfare state policies than Republicans, it is possible that these individuals will be more likely to support Obama rather than Romney in the upcoming election.
It is, of course, impossible to determine the definitive effect of something like a recession on the outcome of a national election. Taking stock of the changes in attitudes we see during the most recent recession, however, can offer some clues as to the direction of political winds. From the limited set of studies we review in this post, it seems that the economic turmoil of the Great Recession may point in the direction of support for Obama, but only time will tell.