More to the picture than meets the eye? Governors’ popularity, voters’ polarization, and political budget cycles

The use of incentives by politicians in terms of fiscal expenditures, such as engineering a political budget cycle, depends on their popularity and on the degree of polarization of the voters. In this study, we assume that this relationship is nonlinear, using data for the US governors over 30 years. Furthermore, we show that the association between popularity, polarization, and fiscal expenditures is U-shaped. The more polarized the electoral base is, the more the popularity matters, and the connection is especially significant and positive for higher levels of popularity. The relation is more visible in election years, signaling an opportunistic as well as reelection-oriented strategic behavior, rather than a partisan one.