Patrimonial Economic Voting: A Neglected Dimension

Economic voting studies have been dominated by the classic rewardpunishment paradigm, where voters vote for the incumbent under good economic performance, but against under bad. This paradigm works well when the economic issue is a valence issue, such as prosperity. However, it leaves out positional economic voting, where the voter’s place in the economic structure in‡uences policy preference and, thus, party preference. More precisely, we suggest that the better the economic location of voters in terms of wealth (or patrimony), high-risk wealth in particular, the more they will vote right, because the right promises a better return on their