It’s well known that the state of the economy is an important influence on voting behaviour: "it's the economy, stupid." What’s not so well known is that this is also true even if the state of the economy has nothing at all to do with politicians. A new study of Spain’s Christmas lottery shows this:
In a province receiving Christmas Lottery awards equivalent to 1% of per capita GDP, the incumbent party enjoys a significant increase in the share of votes of approximately 0.21 percentage points.
This is probably because the increase in happiness created by a lottery win increases people’s preference for the status quo. This is consistent with this research (pdf) from the US which has found that incumbents do better if the local college football team won a game shortly before the election.
In the debate about the merits of democracy - which is not as active as it should be - this is a point in support of Bryan Caplan and Eric Hobsbawm (strange bedfellows!) and against Norm.
Otherwise known as the World Cup Effect which in 1966 did the beleaguered Harold Wilson no harm at all.
Posted by: Grumpy Old Man | January 19, 2011 at 10:10 PM