Keywords: Political behavior, participation and culture

Using the case of Chile, a stable democracy where economic perceptions have varied in different directions, we analyze the effect of socio-tropic and ego-tropic prospective and retrospective economic perceptions on vote intention for the incumbent candidate and on presidential approval. Since incumbent government coalition candidates have won elections under favorable and adverse economic conditions in the 1990-2017 period, we test the extent to which the different indicators of economic perceptions—mediated by ideology and socio-demographic indicators—explain vote intention in presidential elections for the candidate of the incumbent coalition. We also assess to what extent those same variables explain presidential approval under different economic conditions. We use 6 pre-electoral polls and 60 national presidential elections polls for the period in Chile to assess the effect of economic vote variables on vote intention and presidential approval in a consolidating democracy.
We have two dependent variables, voting for the incumbent coalition candidate and presidential approval. The independent variables are socio-tropic and ego-tropic prospective and retrospective economic perception. Our control variables are ideology and socio-demographic indicators.