Abstract

We find that voters who associate themselves with the "winning team" in election, i.e., Leave voters in the 2016 UK Brexit vote and Trump voters in 2016 US presidential election, substantially increase their expectations for the stock market, but change their expectations of their household economic wellbeing only modestly. Respondents who associate themselves with the "losing team" are more varied in their responses, but the overall impact of the election outcome on this group is more muted. Second, changes in the stated expectations of respondents who associate themselves with the "winning team" are indicative of attitudinal shifts that do not manifest themselves in their actual behavior (they may be partisan cheerleading) as revealed by their online search behavior, in contrast to the members of the "losing team," whose decline in durable goods purchases correlate with their stated economic expectations. Combining novel survey data and search, this study provides a uniquely meaningful comparison of stated attitudes with actual behaviors.

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Citation

Huberman, Gur, Tobias Konitzer, Masha Krupenkin, David Rothschild, and Shawndra Hill. "Economic Expectations, Voting, and Economic Decisions around Elections." AEA Papers and Proceedings 108 (May 2018): 597-602.

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