Evaluating Economic Policy: A Contextual Model of the Opinion Formation Process

Previous research on economic voting has focused on the link between economic policy attitudes and candidate choice, taking the existence and formation of policy evaluations for granted. Arguments about the appropriateness of electoral control over economic policymaking, however, implicate directly the sources and the quality of those issue opinions. This research investigates the way in which policy evaluations on macroeconomic management are formed. The paper formulates a model of voter information processing and inferential reasoning that accounts for the connection between objective conditions and policy judgments. A notable feature of the model is its hypothesis of complementary roles for personal financial condition and "contextual" information about economic activity in the local area as sources of subjective economic grievances and economic policy evaluations. The model is estimated with national sample survey data collected in 1978.