Stratifiering, välfärd och socialpolitik-seminarium, vid Institutet för social forskning (SOFI);

David Weisstanner från Aarhus University presenterar "Permanent income and electoral realignment"

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Abstract

Many scholars argue that education or occupation, not income, are key to explain electoral realignment. Yet income is generally conceptualized as short-term, current income. In this paper, I introduce “permanent income”, a long-term income measure over people’s entire lifespan, to re-examine the relationship between income and electoral realignment. I argue that permanent income closely overlaps with education and that the association between permanent income and voting is driven by important changes in composition and size of education-income groups. Using national election studies from Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the United States from the 1950s to the present, I find that electoral realignment is driven by higher-educated voters with high permanent income increasingly associated with mainstream left parties, and by lower-educated voters with low permanent income increasingly associated with mainstream right parties. The findings point to both material and non-material channels behind the effects of income and education on electoral behaviour.