Studie des Instituts für Weltwirtschaft Kiel, 4.12.2024 (engl. Original)
The political consequences of inflation feature prominently in the public debate. In the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign, 41 percent of Americans considered inflation a key problem. Surveys show that voters for whom inflation was a central concern were much more likely to support Donald Trump. In the European elections in the summer of 2024, a majority of voters reported similar dissatisfaction with high inflation. [...]
Given that people dislike inflation and perceive it as unfair, does higher than expected inflation trigger a political backlash in the form of measurable shifts in voting behavior in elections? More precisely, we ask whether inflation surprises prompt individuals to turn away from mainstream political parties and vote for parties from the extremist and populist spectrum. […]
We address the question empirically using a novel long-run cross-country data set spanning 76 years, 18 economies, and 365 elections. […] Our core finding is that [...] inflation surprises are systematically associated with increased vote shares for anti-system, extremist and populist parties. We estimate that in the post-WWII period, a 10 percentage point positive surprise in inflation leads to a significant 15 percent or 1.7 percentage point increase in extremist vote shares in the next general election – even after controlling for the effects of overall inflation. In contrast, positive growth surprises reduce extremist party vote shares.
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