ABSTRACT
Economic issues weighed heavier on Icelanders ahead of the 2009 parliamentary election than in previous elections. As Figure 1 shows, the crisis was quite severe. After years of sustained economic growth, the economy contracted by nearly 7%. Given the magnitude of the crisis, one would expect the economy to have been more salient than in the previous two elections (2003 and 2007) that followed periods of sustained economic growth. The Icelandic National Election Study asks an open-ended question about which two issues the respondent considers most important. While the question has been asked from the beginning of the Icelandic National Election Study, the coding scheme was changed with 2003 study. The responses to the question in the three studies conducted since then are coded into roughly 40 specific categories that are collapsed into a smaller number of categories for clearer presentation. Figure 2 shows the proportion of respondents that mentioned each of the 16 policy
areas as the most and the second most important issue in the three elections. Social Services were considered one of the most important issues and received the highest proportion of total mentions in each election. In 2007 it was clearly the dominant issue whereas in 2003 it was in close contest with economic issues and the fisheries issue, which had to do with the system of fishing quotas. Economic issues hardly played any role in the 2007 election and issues such the environment, the urban-rural divide, and the health care system received about as much attention. The landscape changed drastically in 2009. The economic crisis was the most frequently mentioned issue, followed by social services. However, the figure likely understates the importance of the economic crisis as some respondents cited economic policy, which in many instances was in reference to the crisis without it being explicitly mentioned. The same may be true for those respondents mentioning social services, i.e., in some instances the respondents mentioned the financial situation of households. While the number of respondents mentioning social services is not out of line with
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economic performance influence voters’ decisions in a fairly straightforward manner while more recent contributions have emphasized factors such as clarity of responsibility condition economic voting (Powell &Whitten, 1993) and how economic evaluations shape prospective evaluations of parties (Duch & Stevenson, 2008). More significant shocks to the economy may, possibly, trigger a different response from voters. It has been observed that left governments have become a rarity in the wake of the recession, suggesting that voters have rejected the luxurious welfare policies of the left in favor of the right’s greater perceived competence in economic matters.3 Bartels (2011, 2012), examining the question of whether voters adopt a retrospective view, holding incumbents accountable, or a prospective view, in this case favoring the ideological right, concludes that voters focus more on the incumbents’ performance than their ideological orientation. Iceland is a particular interesting case for examining these questions as the incumbent government had only taken the reins of power a year and half prior to the election. Thus, it is difficult to argue that the government at the time of the crises was fully responsible for the crises. Examining the extent to which voters held these parties responsible, therefore, offers an insight into the degree to which voters make ‘reasoned’ decisions about who to hold accountable and the degree to which they act impulsively in reaction to their economic situation.
