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Lecture 2: Identity and Voting

Mateusz Stalinski

EC340: Topics in Applied Economics (3a)

University of Warwick

Autumn 2023
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Introduction

Identity and Voting

▶ Previously, we studied determinants of political participation.

▶ We focused specifically on election turnout.
▶ The next big question: what shapes political preferences?
▶ Electoral choices, policy support, trust in institutions...
▶ But also political identity (groupiness, sense of self).
▶ No clear-cut boundaries between these terms.
▶ The former may be expressions of political identity.
▶ Let’s not forget about consequential motives
▶ Why do people support redistribution?
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Introduction

Key Questions

1. What are the key predictors of electoral behavior?

▶ We know that education, income, gender, etc., all matter.
▶ How to build a framework based on primitives?
▶ Moral foundations (Enke, 2020).
2. What shapes political identity and attitudes?
▶ The role of education and propaganda (Cantoni et al., 2017).
3. What are the costs of being “disloyal”?
▶ Preserving the sense of self (Bursztyn et al., 2020).
4. How to persuade others?
▶ Last time, we looked at the persuasive power of political ads
(Spenkuch and Toniatti, 2018).
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Enke (2020)

Morality-Based Framework

▶ Why do poor individuals vote for low taxes?

▶ Enke (2020) proposed a framework which could explain why
people seemingly vote against their (material) self-interest.
▶ People care about moral values.
▶ A sense of “right” and “wrong”.
▶ Can simple moral categories predict electoral choices better
than standard demographics?
▶ Is there a match between voters’ moral values and values that
politicians emphasize?
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Enke (2020)

Moral Universalism

▶ Universalist values apply regardless of the context or identity.

▶ Individual rights, justice, impartial fairness, and avoidance of
externalities.
▶ Communal values are tied to certain relationships or groups.
▶ Community, loyalty, betrayal, respect, and tradition.
▶ Universalists do not take into account social distance.
▶ Universal human concern vs. loyalty to the local community.
▶ Important given the perceived decline of community ties.
▶ Rural white voters in the U.S. worried about “moral decline”
wrt local communities (Wuthnow, 2018).
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Enke (2020)

Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ)

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Enke (2020)

MFQ and MFD

▶ MFQs are well-established in psychology.

▶ These can be applied in surveys to measure voters’ moral type
(universalist vs. communal).
▶ Moral Foundations Dictionary (MFD) offers keywords
indicative of references to universalist vs. communal values.
▶ This is useful for categorizing politicians’ speeches.
▶ Combining the two approaches allows the author to study
supply and demand of moral universalism.
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Enke (2020)

Voting

▶ The paper assumes that voters minimize the distance between

their moral type θi and the weighted average of:
▶ Candidate’s moral type θj ,
▶ Their party’s moral type θ¯j .
▶ Justification: influence of the party over its politicians.
▶ Voter’s utility function:

ui,j = −λ(θi − θj,p )2 + ϵi,j ,

where
θj,p = αθj + (1 − α)θ¯j .
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Enke (2020)

Predictions

▶ If θk > θl and θ¯k > θ¯l , then the probability of voting for
candidate k is increasing in the relative importance of
universalist values of a voter θi .
▶ Both inequalities are important.
▶ Example: Democrats are more universalist than Republicans,
but McCain was more universalist than Obama.
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Enke (2020)

Demand Side

▶ N=280,000 took an MFQ on www.yourmorals.org.

▶ Aggregate the results to county level.
▶ People self-selected to visit the website.
▶ An average of 95 observations per county (noisy!).
▶ Not a random sample of the county residents.
▶ Additionally, an N=4,000 survey with a representative sample
of U.S. population.
▶ Additional benefit: a rich set of covariates.
▶ Measure: relative importance of universalist values.
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Enke (2020)

Moral Universalism by County (yourmorals)

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Enke (2020)

County-Level Results
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Enke (2020)

Urban-Rural Divide
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Enke (2020)

Individual-Level Results
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Enke (2020)

Demand Side: Summary

▶ County-level and individual-level data show strong negative
correlation between universalist values and voting for Trump.
▶ Both in the primaries and the general election (2016).
▶ The results hold conditional on a rich set of covariates and
with different FEs.
▶ Individual: 1 s.d. higher relative importance of universalist
values is associated with a 21 pp increase in the probability of
voting for Trump.
▶ Moral universalism explains more variation than a set of typical
covariates.
▶ A recent rise in communal values among (rural) voters.
▶ This might partially explain the “Trump effect.”
▶ It suggests that a longer trend is responsible.
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Enke (2020)

Supply Side

▶ Apply the MFD to compute the relative frequency of

universalist keywords in post-war congressional speeches.
▶ We can plot the supply of moral universalism over time.
▶ American Presidency Project (APP) gathered 17,000
campaign documents related to candidates after 2008.
▶ This allows a more in-depth look at the supply of moral
universalism on a campaign trail.
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Enke (2020)

Congressional Speeches
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Enke (2020)

Congressional Speeches

▶ Both parties became more universalist after 1960s.

▶ Increasing divergence between Republicans and Democrats,
with Republicans being more communal.
▶ Recently, a downward trend in universalism, especially for
Republicans.
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Enke (2020)

APP Data: Candidates

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Enke (2020)

Strategic Use of Universalism

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Enke (2020)

APP Data: Results

▶ Republican politicians more communal than Democrats.

▶ Significant heterogeneity within each party.
▶ Politicians strategically choose when to refer to different
moral values.
▶ They don’t think about it directly.
▶ But the two moral types capture their understanding of
different parts of the electorate.
▶ Clinton more communal after winning against Sanders.
▶ Trump more universalist after defeating Cruz.
▶ During primaries, politicians must appeal to their base. In
general elections, they need to consider independents too.
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Enke (2020)

Conclusion

▶ Moral values strongly correlated with people’s voting patterns.

▶ Both at the county and individual level.
▶ Conditional on a rich set of covariates.
▶ These match the supply-side patterns.
▶ Communal values positively correlated with voting for Trump.
▶ Trump’s speeches are also relatively more communal.
▶ Candidates strategically “choose” when to reference
universalist vs. communal values.
▶ The paper is descriptive, but the correlation patters are robust
and cover both the supply and demand side.
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Enke (2020)

Conclusion

▶ Moral universalism is a very active area of research.

▶ For example, it can be used to predict policy preferences
across countries.
▶ Key: voters with strong communal values dislike policies based
on trust to outgroup members.
▶ Generous benefits are bad because others will “cheat”.
▶ Note that communal values emphasize trust and loyalty to
those socially close.
▶ We will talk more about groupiness in the next class.
▶ For more on moral universalism, check out Enke et al. (2022)
and Enke et al. (2023).
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Presentations:

Presentations

▶ Presentation 1: Cantoni et al. (2017)

▶ A rare evidence on factors shaping political identity and
attitudes.
▶ Focus on the role of education and propaganda.
▶ Presentation 2: Bursztyn et al. (2020)
▶ Establishes the importance of political identity.
▶ Experimentally separates it from consequential and social
motives.
▶ Documents the cost of preserving one’s sense of self.
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References

References

Bursztyn, L., M. Callen, B. Ferman, S. Gulzar, A. Hasanain, and N. Yuchtman (2020):

“Political identity: Experimental evidence on anti-Americanism in Pakistan,”
Journal of the European Economic Association, 18, 2532–2560.
Cantoni, D., Y. Chen, D. Y. Yang, N. Yuchtman, and Y. J. Zhang (2017):
“Curriculum and ideology,” Journal of political economy, 125, 338–392.
Enke, B. (2020): “Moral values and voting,” Journal of Political Economy, 128,
3679–3729.
Enke, B., R. Rodriguez-Padilla, and F. Zimmermann (2022): “Moral universalism:
Measurement and economic relevance,” Management Science, 68, 3590–3603.
Enke, B., R. Rodríguez-Padilla, and F. Zimmermann (2023): “Moral universalism and
the structure of ideology,” The Review of Economic Studies, 90, 1934–1962.
Spenkuch, J. L. and D. Toniatti (2018): “Political advertising and election results,”
The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133, 1981–2036.
Wuthnow, R. (2018): The left behind: Decline and rage in rural America, Princeton
University Press.