Life Satisfaction and Incumbent Voting: Examining the Mediating Effect of Trust in Government

Abstract

An emerging body of evidence suggests a causal relationship between wellbeing and incumbent voting. However, the evidence is primarily founded upon established democracies with regular turnovers of power. Moreover, the mechanism underlying this relationship is still relatively unknown. Using the intricacies of the Malaysian political context and Malaysian data from the seventh wave of the World Values Survey (WVS), this study examines the mediating role of trust in government to explain the relationship between life satisfaction and incumbent voting. Notably, the Malaysian WVS was concluded two weeks before Malaysia’s fourteenth general election (GE14), which witnessed the end of the ruling coalition’s six-decade hold on power since independence and subsequently ushered in the country’s first-ever peaceful transfer of power. The empirical analysis indicated that the mediating role of trust in the relationship between life satisfaction and incumbent voting is supported. Further empirical analysis also showed that the mediating effect of trust was unique to the GE14 context compared to GE13, thus providing a better understanding of the role trust plays in the outcome of the election. The results provide valuable insights and implications in political science, especially for a nation emerging from its authoritarian state.