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Published February 1983 | public
Journal Article

Who is held responsible? Further evidence on the Hibbing-Alford thesis

Abstract

Macroeconomic conditions clearly exert an impact on the electoral fortunes of the governing party, but little agreement exists about the microlevel mechanisms that underlie the aggregate relationships. In particular, efforts to base the aggregate findings on the financial fortunes of individual voters have proved fruitless. Hibbing and Alford suggest, however, that previous studies failed to differentiate among three types of in-party candidates--incumbents, open-seat candidates, and challengers of out-party incumbents--and that only in the first category should we find individual voters holding the in-party responsible. The strongest support for the argument is an analysis of 1978 survey data. This article replicates the Hibbing-Alford findings for 1978 using a different methodology and provides additional analyses from five more election studies. In all, four of six elections yield a pattern of coefficients broadly consistent with the Hibbing-Alford thesis, but in only two elections--both presidential election years surprisingly enough--are the results on solid statistical ground.

Additional Information

(c) 1983 by the University of Texas Press. Manuscript submitted 17 February 1982; Final manuscript received 8 June 1982. I wish to thank Richard Born for helpful comments on an earlier version of this note. Formerly SSWP 435.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 20, 2023