The economic roots of cross‐national similarity in voter preferences

We argue that economic and political integration leads voters’ politicalpreferences toward cross-national convergence. Analyzing data on voter pref-erences across 30 European democracies from 1976 to 2022, we measure thesimilarity of preference distributions across state dyads over time, document-ing an average increase in similarity over this period. We then model theseassociations statistically and find that greater similarity and complementar-ity in economic production and co-participation in the European Union andthe Eurozone are associated with increasingly similar voter preferences. Theargument and analyses broaden our understanding of the political implica-tions of globalization and also provide a theoretical and empirical foundationfor two growing literatures: one on the cross-national diffusion of parties’strategies and one on the political implications of macroeconomic stimulisuch as trade shocks or banking crises.