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Replication Data for: Elite Cues and Economic Policy Attitudes: The Mediating Role of Economic Hardship

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: Elite Cues and Economic Policy Attitudes: The Mediating Role of Economic Hardship
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TY8RB9
 
Creator Neundorf, Anja
Cavaille, Charlotte
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description Replication files for "Elite Cues and Economic Policy Attitudes: The Mediating Role of Economic Hardship" (Political Bahevior). The files include code and data to replicate all empirical results (tables and figures) presented in the main manuscript as well as the online appendix of the paper. Abstract: Do voters update their attitudes toward economic issues in line with their material self-interest? The consensus among students of public opinion is that material self-interest plays a very limited role and that competing non-material factors, such as partisanship or ideological predispositions, do most of the heavy lifting. This paper moves beyond comparing the role of material and non-material factors. Instead, we examine how these factors \textit{combine} to shape policy preferences. Specifically, we propose a friendly amendment to Zaller's influential model according to which attitudinal change results from the interaction between changes in elite messaging on the one hand and individual political predispositions on the other. In Zaller's model, partisanship and ideological predispositions help explain why some resist and others embrace new elite messaging. We hypothesize that material self-interest also conditions the effect of elite messaging. Using British individual-level panel data collected over more than a decade, we show that material hardship predicts who, among left-wing voters, resist new right-wing partisan cues. Our results highlights the incremental impact of material self-interest on economic attitudes.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Attitude formation; economic preferences; self-interest; panel data; Great Britain; Zaller
 
Contributor Neundorf, Anja