| 1. |
- Brännlund, Anton, et al.
(författare)
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Jolts at the ballot box : Electricity prices and voting in Swedish manufacturing communities
- 2024
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Ingår i: Energy Research & Social Science. - : Elsevier. - 2214-6296 .- 2214-6326. ; 110
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This research examines the overlooked political implications of energy pricing on voting patterns in manufacturing communities, amidst increasing scholarly interest in the political ramifications of Western industrial decline. We focus specifically on the surge in electricity prices and their effect on electoral choices in manufacturing -dense regions in Sweden during the 2022 general elections. The rise in electricity costs holds particular significance given Europe's reliance on imported energy for competitive manufacturing, coupled with the existing constraints on energy supply. With energy prices being a direct threat to industries and influencing the competitiveness of manufacturing firms and job security, we argue that these factors could significantly influence voting behaviour in affected communities. Our findings show that areas with higher electricity costs witnessed a more robust performance by the incumbent Social Democratic Party, suggesting that economic insecurity may indeed spur greater demand for traditional left-wing policies, such as economic compensation.
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| 2. |
- Ahlskog, Rafael, et al.
(författare)
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Uncovering the source of patrimonial voting
- 2022
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Ingår i: Political Behavior. - : Springer Nature. - 0190-9320 .- 1573-6687. ; 44:4, s. 1681-1702
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The boom in wealth inequality seen in recent decades has generated a steep rise in scholarly interest in both the drivers and the consequences of the wealth gap. In political science, a pertinent questionregards the political behavior across the wealth spectrum. A common argument is that the wealthy practice patrimonial voting, i.e. voting for right-wing parties to maximize returns on their assets. While thispattern is descriptively well documented, it is less certain to what extent this reflects an actual causal relationship between wealth and political preferences. In this study, we provide new evidence by exploitingwealth variation within identical twin pairs. Our findings suggest that while more wealth is descriptivelyconnected to more support for right-wing parties, the causal impact of wealth on policy preferences islikely highly overstated. For several relevant policy areas these effects may not exist at all. Furthermore,the bias in naive observational estimates seems to be mainly driven by environmental familial confoundersshared within twin pairs, rather than genetic confounding.
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| 3. |
- Brännlund, Anton
(författare)
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Labor Market Conditions and Partisan Voting : How Unemployment Hurts the Left
- 2021
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Ingår i: Political Behavior. - : Springer. - 0190-9320 .- 1573-6687. ; 43, s. 363-396
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Fluctuations in the labor market are a natural part of the business cycle, and they have attracted attention from political scientists for decades. Some scholars argue that left-wing parties benefit from rising rates of unemployment while others claim that voters rally behind conservative parties when the labor market weakens. I argue that the heterogeneous response of voters to a rise in the unemployment rate is due to differences in asset wealth. Put simply, the well-off have less need for social insurance, so they vote for conservative parties in order to put a cap on social spending when the unemployment rate rises; by contrast, asset-less voter opt for the left, with an eye to preserving their entitlements. I show with panel data from Swedish electoral districts that left-wing parties gain an electoral advantage when the local unemployment rate rises in less well-off areas, but they lose support when unemployment rises in wealthier districts.
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| 4. |
- Brännlund, Anton
(författare)
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Patrimony at risk : Market risk and right-wing voting
- 2022
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Ingår i: Comparative Political Studies. - : Sage Publications. - 0010-4140 .- 1552-3829. ; 55:11, s. 1877-1909
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The current literature suggest that financial assets push investors to votefor conservative parties given that right-wing policies is said to generate higher returns. Another popular argument is that wealth reduces demand for welfare spendinggiven that private assets can be used as a substitute for social benefits. What I askin this study is if asset owners always support right-wing parties and a trimmed welfare state. I argue that owners of financial assets become less tempted by free-marketpolicy offerings when there is uncertainty in financial markets. The dot-com bubble,the financial crisis, and most recently the massive impact on financial markets of thecoronavirus show that savings can evaporate in a matter of days. I show that the support for right-wing parties decreases in areas with much financial assets under suchconditions.
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| 5. |
- Brännlund, Anton, et al.
(författare)
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Power politics : How electric grievances shape election outcomes
- 2024
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Ingår i: Ecological Economics. - : Elsevier. - 0921-8009 .- 1873-6106. ; 217
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We argue in this study that higher electricity expenditures increase voter support for the radical right because these parties oppose costly climate mitigation policies. We use data from Sweden, which experiences extremely high demand for heating energy during winter months. The demand for electricity differs greatly between geographical regions due to large temperature differences, from 0 in the southern regions to-50 Celsius in the north. We create our independent variable of electric grievances based on this variation, which increases faster with the spot price of electricity in neighborhoods with a low disposable income relative to the average electricity bill in that area. Using this setup, we find that electric grievances are associated with increased support for the radical right. We argue that soaring electricity prices tend to hurt parties with a mainstream profile since voters associate them them with more ambitious decarbonization policies, while the radical right gain support, since they tend to oppose costly solutions. Our results suggests that the transition to renewable energy can grind to a halt when electricity prices rise higher because voters may abandon the parties who push for the green transition.
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| 6. |
- Brännlund, Anton
(författare)
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Wealth and the economic vote : How assets and liabilities shape election outcomes
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis contributes to the literature on economic voting, especially the subfield of the electoral impact in relation to wealth. The thesis consists of an introductory chapter and four independent research articles based on data from Sweden. Based on the first article, I find that the support for right-wing parties decreases in areas where voters are heavily invested in financial assets when there is a large amount of volatility in the world markets. Such patterns suggest that voters are responsive to financial risks. Through the second study, I illustrate that voters are sensitive to changes in monetary policies as well. More precisely, I show that voters tend to reward governments for decreases in interest rates. With the third study, I investigate the interplay of markets in a more direct way, estimating the effect of unemployment on voting in relation to household wealth. I find that the Swedish left-wing parties gain electoral advantage when the unemployment rates rise in less wealthy areas but that they lose support where voters are comparatively well-off. Finally, based on the fourth study, I investigate whether wealth has an impact on how voters behave with individual level data. The findings in this study suggest that wealthy citizens vote for right-wing parties to a grater extent. However, the estimated effect is small.
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| 7. |
- Brännlund, Anton
(författare)
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Zero per cent accountability? : How low interest rates save governments from electoral defeats
- 2021
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Ingår i: European Journal of Political Economy. - : Elsevier. - 0176-2680 .- 1873-5703. ; 68
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The fact that scholars describe the response to the great recession as muted and moderate should motivate political scientists to study the economic vote from new angles. Hence, this study aims to investigate the compensating effect of falling interest rate expenditures on election outcomes because they usually fall when the economy slows down. To investigate this question, I use data from Swedish electoral districts between the years 2002 and 2014. I find that Swedish households reward local governments for falling interest rate expenditures. Moreover, this result is surprising because local politicians do not determine monetary policy and suggest that government can survive during harsh times because indebted households are compensated with lower interest rate expenditures when the degree of economic activity goes down.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Szulkin, Jan, 1989-, et al.
(författare)
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How does a growing wealth gap affect voting? : Evidence from Sweden
- 2023
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Ingår i: Electoral Studies. - : Elsevier. - 0261-3794 .- 1873-6890. ; 85
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper studies the relationship between the growing wealth gap and voter behavior. The patrimonial voting literature suggests that wealth in itself leads to more right-wing voting, but we argue that previous research has overlooked the relative aspect of wealth. Drawing on classical models of political economy we hypothesize that voters who fall behind others should demand more redistribution and therefore vote for Left wing parties. We find robust support for this using wealth data from Swedish electoral precincts between 1998 and 2006. Additional analyses suggest that it is mainly relative house wealth that relates to voting, and not other wealth types. This supports an argument that visibility is important for the effect of relative resources. We also find that the results appear to be driven by right-wing voters moving to the left rather than increased turnout.
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