Selected Publications
Sheltering Populists? House Prices and the Support for Populist Parties
With Frederik Hjorth, Jacob Nyrup and Ben AnseLL
Journal of Politics, 84(3), 1420-1436
Populist parties, particularly from the right of the political spectrum, have sharply increased their electoral support in recent years, creating great media and scholarly interest. Existing work examining the economic underpinnings of populist support has focused on labor market shocks and the presence or absence of government compensation. In this paper we suggest that the housing market may have been as important as the labor market in defining who switched to populist voting and where they were located. We build on existing work that connects house prices to ‘first dimension politics’ of redistribution and classic left-right political identification to argue that house prices might also shape preferences on the ‘second dimension’ of politics: support for populist nationalism versus liberal cosmopolitanism. Using both novel precinct and individual-level data from Denmark, we show that negative shocks to house prices over the election cycle are strongly associated with shifts to support for the Danish People’s Party, a pattern that has amplified over recent elections. We then turn to corroborate this relationship using local housing data in Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
[PDF]
How Do Voters Hold Politicians Accountable for Personal Welfare? Evidence of a Self-Serving Bias
The Journal of Politics, 83 (2), 740-752
Examining a government’s record is difficult. This is a problem for voters who want to hold governments accountable. One solution is for voters to hold governments accountable for changes in their personal welfare. Yet, it is often unclear whether changes in personal welfare are caused by government policies or voters’ own actions. Since voters have a desire to protect their self-image, this ambiguity might fuel a self-serving bias in attribution. That is, voters might take personal responsibility for positive changes in personal welfare and hold the government responsible for negative changes. Using data from election surveys and survey experiments, this article shows that voters attribute responsibility for personal welfare in this self-serving way. This hurts democratic accountability because voters do not reward governments (enough) for improving their personal welfare.
[pdf] [replication materials] [supplementary materials]
When Does Accommodation Work? Electoral Effects of Mainstream Left Position-Taking on Immigration
With Frederik Hjorth
British Journal of Political Science, 52(2), 949-957
In many countries, right-wing populist parties have gained electoral support by attracting voters from mainstream left parties. This has prompted public and scholarly debate about whether mainstream left parties can regain political power by taking a more restrictive position on immigration, a so-called accommodation strategy. However, selection bias confounds observational estimates of the effectiveness of this strategy. This letter reports the results of a survey experiment conducted among Danish voters during a unique political situation in which the mainstream left party’s position on immigration is ambiguous, enabling experimental manipulation of voters’ perceptions of the party’s position. The authors show that, consistent with spatial models of politics, accommodation attracts anti-immigration voters and repels pro-immigration voters. Because repelled voters defect to other left parties, while attracted voters come from right parties, accommodation increases overall support for parties that support a mainstream left government. The results demonstrate that in some contexts, accommodation can improve the political prospects of the mainstream left.
[pdf] [replication materials] [supplementary materials]
When Do Citizens Respond Politically to the Local Economy? Evidence from Registry Data on Local Housing Markets
with Frederik Hjorth, Peter Dinesen and Kim Sønderskov
American Political Science Review, 113(2), 499-516
Recent studies of economic voting have focused on the role of the local economy, but with inconclusive results. We argue that while local economic conditions affect incumbent support on average, the importance of the local economy varies by citizens’ interactions with it. More recent and frequent encounters with aspects of the local economy make those aspects more salient and, in turn, feature more prominently in evaluations of the incumbent government. We label this process “context priming”. We provide evidence for these propositions by studying local housing markets. Linking granularly detailed data on housing prices from Danish public registries to both precinct-level election returns and an individual-level panel survey, we find that when individuals interact with the housing market, their support for the incumbent government is more responsive to changes in local housing prices. The study thus provides a framework for understanding when citizens respond politically to the local economy.
[pdf] [replication materials] [supplementary materials]
Reducing Bias in Citizens’ Perception of Crime Rates
Evidence From a Field Experiment on Burglary Prevalence
with Asmus Olsen
Journal of politics, 82(2), 747-752
Citizens are, on average, too pessimistic when assessing the trajectory of current crime trends. In this study, we examine whether we can correct this perceptual bias with respect to burglaries. Using a field experiment coupled with a large panel survey (n = 4,895), we explore whether a public information campaign can reduce misperceptions about the prevalence of burglaries. Embedding the correct information about burglary rates in a direct mail campaign, we find that it is possible to substantially reduce citizens’ misperceptions. Importantly, the effects are not short-lived: they are detectable several weeks after the mailer was sent, but they are temporary and eventually the perceptual bias reemerges. Our results suggest that if citizens were continually supplied with correct information about crime rates they would be less pessimistic. Reducing bias in citizens’ perception of crime rates might therefore be a matter of adjusting the supply of (dis)information about crime.
[pdf] [replication materials] [supplementary materials]
Is the relationship between political responsibility and electoral accountability causal, adaptive and policy-specific?
Political Behavior, 41(4), 1071–1098
Will voters hold an incumbent more electorally accountable for the quality of a policy outcome if the incumbent’s political responsibility for the underlying policy increases? To answer this question, this study exploits a reform of labor market regulation in Denmark that exogenously assigned more political responsibility for unemployment services to some municipal mayors. The study finds that in subsequent elections these mayors were held more electorally accountable for unemployment services, but not more accountable for other policy outcomes. This suggests that the relationship between political responsibility and electoral accountability is causal, adaptive and tied to specific policies. On balance, the electorate thus seems to be quite judicious when assigning electoral credit or blame, moderating the extent to which incumbents are held accountable for specific outcomes based on the extent to which these incumbents crafted and implemented the policies that shaped these outcomes.
[pdf] [replication materials] [supplementary materials]
Incumbent Tenure Crowds Out Economic Voting
British Journal of Political Science, 51(2), 646-665.
Does the importance of the economy change during a government’s time in office? Governments arguably become more responsible for current economic conditions as their tenure progresses. This might lead voters to hold experienced governments more accountable for economic conditions. However, voters also accumulate information about governments’ competence over time. If voters are Bayesian learners, then this growing stock of information should crowd out the importance of current economic conditions. This article explores these divergent predictions about the relationship between tenure and the economic vote using three datasets. First, using country-level data from a diverse set of elections, the study finds that support for more experienced governments is less dependent on economic growth. Secondly, using individual-level data from sixty election surveys covering ten countries, the article shows that voters’ perceptions of the economy have a greater impact on government support when the government is inexperienced. Finally, the article examines a municipal reform in Denmark that assigned some voters to new local incumbents and finds that these voters responded more strongly to the local economy. In conclusion, all three studies point in the same direction: economic voting decreases with time in office.
[pdf] [replication materials] [supplementary materials]
Do Survey Estimates of the Public's Compliance with COVID-19 Regulations
Suffer from Social Desirability Bias?
with Michael Bang Petersen and Jacob Nyrup
Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 3(2)
The COVID-19 pandemic has led governments to instate a large number of restrictions on and recommendations for citizens’ behavior. One widely used tool for measuring compliance with these strictures are nationally representative surveys that ask citizens to self-report their behavior. But if respondents avoid disclosing socially undesirable behaviors, such as not complying with government strictures in a public health crisis, estimates of compliance will be biased upwards. To assess the magnitude of this problem, this study compares measures of compliance from direct questions to those estimated from list-experiments - a response technique that allows respondents to report illicit behaviors without individual-level detection. Implementing the list-experiment in two separate surveys of Danish citizens (n>5,000), we find no evidence that citizens under-report non-compliant behavior. We therefore conclude that survey estimates of compliance with COVID-19 regulations do not suffer from social desirability bias.
[pdf] [replication materials]
How campaigns enhance European issues voting during European Parliament elections
with Derek Beach and Kasper Møller Hansen
Political Science Research and Methods, 6(4), 791-808
Based on findings from the literature on campaign effects on the one hand, and the literature on European Parliament elections on the other, we propose a model of European Parliamentary elections in which the campaign shift the calculus of electoral support, making differences in national political allegiances less important and attitudes about the European project more important by informing voters of and getting them interested in European politics. In effect, we argue that the political campaign leading up to the election makes European Parliament elections less second order. While previous studies have demonstrated that EU issues can matter for voting behavior in European Parliament elections, existing research has drawn on post-election surveys that do not enable us to capture campaign effects. Our contribution is to assess the impact of a campaign by utilizing a rolling cross sectional survey that enables us to track how voters were affected by the campaign. Our findings show that campaigns do have an effect on European Parliament election outcomes, in that they provide information that enables voters to make decisions based on their attitude on European issues, making voter decision-making more dominated by EU issue voting
[pdf] [replication materials] [supplementary materials]
Work in Progress
Reining in the Rascals: challenger parties path to power
With Frederik HJORTH AnD JACOb Nyrup (R&R at Journal of politics)
Challenger parties, i.e. parties without prior government experience, have transformed
politics in Europe and beyond, some eventually joining governing coalitions. However,
the process by which challenger parties gain access to power remains unclear. We
argue that holding elected office in itself improves challenger parties' chances of
entering government. We find support for this expectation in cross-sectional, national-
level data. To establish causality, we apply a regression discontinuity design to an
original data set of more than 2,500 elections and 15,000 committee assignments from
local governments in Denmark. We show that legislative incumbency increases
challenger parties' access to government in the following electoral term. Lastly, using
data from candidate surveys, we show that incumbent challenger parties take more
moderate positions and use more mainstream language, consistent with a moderation
mechanism. Our findings shed new light on the causes of challenger party success
and, more broadly, the centripetal forces driving party system change
[PDF]
GONE WITH THE WIND? Local Incumbents Lose in the Wake of Wind Power Developments
WITH ANDREAS UHRE AND OLE MARTIN LÆGREID
While there is broad public support in most countries for policies that lower CO2 emissions, concrete policy initiatives that lower emissions, such as the construction of wind turbines, tend to face opposition in communities where costs are imposed. If this opposition translates into electoral losses down the line, elected officials might think twice about pursuing such policies. This may in turn hamper mitigation efforts. Further, implementation of climate mitigation policies may lead to deficits of legitimacy if the popular opposition is systematically underestimated or ignored. In spite of this, only a few studies have examined the electoral ramifications of local mitigation policies. This study adds to this bourgeoning literature by connecting granular data on wind power developments with precinct-level election returns in Denmark. We show that the construction of wind turbines creates local electoral opposition to incumbents. These effects are small or non-existent at national elections, but large and meaningful at local elections. This asymmetry suggests that voters’ in affected communities respond more where they have the most electoral leverage, which naturally amplifies their potential influence.