From valence to position: Economic voting in extraordinary conditions

Abstract

Traditional theories of economic voting focusing on retrospective evaluations about the economy have been shown to fare as expected in the Greek context. Nevertheless, the current economic crisis in Greece has not only challenged the structure of the party system but also our understanding of how economic voting works in such extraordinary situations. Drawing from the context of the May 2012 parliamentary election in Greece we argue that economic voting in times of an economic turmoil can be conceptualized as a position issue. Our findings suggest that economic voting conceptualized in terms of position taking does a good job in explaining vote intentions between the incumbent versus the opposition when valence models would have otherwise faced serious challenges in doing so.