ABSTRACT
While the aggregate statistics are revealing they do not tell the whole story about what motivated voters to abandon the Independence party in such large numbers and why the Left Movement ended up being the biggest beneficiary. Data from the Icelandic National Election Study are used to examine whether the determinants of vote choice differed in the election that took place following the economic crises compared with the previous two elections (2003 and 2007). In contrast with the two previous elections, which were held during a period of sus-
tained economic growth, the 2009 election was held only half a year after the onset of the economic crisis. It was, therefore, to be expected that voters would go to the polls with a different set of concerns and, in particular, be more sensitive to issues related to economic conditions. Expectations about the effects of particular variables are
140 I.H. Indridason
The Collapse: Economic Considerations in Vote Choice in Iceland 141
collinear, separate models are estimated for each of the variables in addition to a model that includes both Consumer Confidence and Income Expectations. The models also include a Time Trend to account for the fact that governments are likely to lose support the longer they stay in office (Strøm, 1984). The results are presented in Table 1. The results are fairly consistent across the six
models presented in the table. The variables measuring economic expectations are estimated to have a positive effect on support for the government but the marginal effect is statistically insignificant in one instance, i.e., the effect of expected income on government support (column 2).9 The marginal effects of the variables for the different coalitions are shown in Figure 5. There is not much evidence to suggest that the effects of economic expectations depend on the coalition in office. The IP-SDA coalition appears to be disproportionately affected by economic expectations in the first two models where Government Support is the dependent variable but there are no statistically significant differences between the coalitions after first differences have been taken. The effect is moderate in magnitude. A one percentage point decline in consumer confidence reduces government support by about 0.08 2 0.1 percentage points. The effect of a unit change in economic expectations appears to be slightly larger, or about 0.13 percentage points. While one must be cautious about interpreting the findings as demonstrating a causal relationship between economic expectations and support for the government, the findings are consistent with the hypothesis that voters hold governments accountable for the state of the economy. In sum, it is clear that voters were affected by the economic crises and that their
economic expectations affect their evaluation of government support but that not all government parties are affected equally. Figure 6 suggests that the Independence Party bore the brunt of the voters’ dissatisfaction with the economic crisis. The party lost nearly 13 percentage points at the polls, which amounts to over one-third of its share of the vote in 2007, reaching a historic low. Apart from the minor Liberal Party, the other parties gained votes from the previous election with the Left Movement being the biggest winner gaining 7.4% of the vote.
