Paro y voto: ¿afecta al voto la experiencia de desempleo?

Abstract

We study the electoral effects of unemployment experience, using survey data for all the general elections held in Spain between 1979 and 2011. We test five hypotheses on the relationship between unemployment and vote: inhibition; overall punishment; issue ownership; punishment conditional upon ideological affinity; and politicization of the unemployment experience by left-wing voters. Our results support only the first hypothesis: being unemployed increases the probability of abstaining in seven out of ten elections. On the other hand, there is no indication of egocentric economic voting based on unemployment experience. The unemployed do not use their vote to punish the incumbent party or to support the party owning the unemployment issue. This conclusion stands even if we take into account the possibility that ideology moderates the effects of unemployment.