Donald Trump is Recession Proof:
Partisan Polarization and the End of Economic Voting
in the United States
Thursday, 18 June 2020 • 12–1 p.m.
There is substantial evidence that American voters blame or credit the president for the state of the economy when making electoral decisions. However, a variety of findings on economic voting, cognitive biases in information processing, and party polarization, indicate that both objective and subjective economic information should become less important to voters as partisan polarization increases. Together, these suggest partisan polarization attenuates the link between economic performance and citizens’ votes. Empirical analysis of individual-level vote choices and aggregate election results support this theoretical claim, providing evidence that the economy matters less to the vote when parties are highly polarized than when they are not.
Dr. Joe Ura
Joe Ura is Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University and Texas A&M University at Qatar. He is also currently Interim Chair of the Liberal Arts Program at Texas A&M University at Qatar. He previously served as Associate Head, Director of Undergraduate Programs, and Director of the American Politics Program for the political science department at Texas A&M in College Station.
Dr. Ura’s research addresses American national politics, especially judicial politics, public opinion, and political representation. He and his coauthors have contributed articles to the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, and other peer-reviewed journals in political science, and his research has been supported by the United States’s National Science Foundation.
Dr. Ura is also recognized as an outstanding teacher. He has won the Association of Former Students Award for Teaching Excellence in the College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M, the Texas A&M Student Led Award for Teaching Excellence, the Student Undergraduate Teaching Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Earle Wallace Award for outstanding teaching in the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina.