MUGHAN, Anthony <br/><br/>
Economic performance, job insecurity and electoral choice 

 -  2002 
<br/><br/> The existing literature on economic voting concentrates on egocentric and sociotropic evaluations of short-term economic performance. Scant attentionis paid to other economic concerns people may have. In a neo-liberal economy characterized by global economic competition and a down-sized labour market, one widely publicized economic concern - and one whose consequences political scientists have largely ignoored - is job insecurity. Data from a survey conducted after the 1996 US presidential election show that job insecurity is an novel form of economic discontent that is distinctive in its origins and electoral impact from retrospective evaluations of short-term economic performance. In a multinomial probit model of electoral choice, performance measures offer little explanation of the Perot vote, but sociotropic job insecurity helps to explain why Americans rejected both major-party candidates, as well as abstention, in favour of the thjird-party alternative, Ross Perot