IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/auu/dpaper/516.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Do Unionists Vote? Estimating the Causal Impact of Union Membership on Voting Behaviour from 1966 to 2004

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Leigh

    (SPEAR Centre, RSSS, ANU)

Abstract

I explore the voting patterns of trade union members in Australian elections conducted between 1966 and 2004, and find that on average, 63 percent of trade union members vote for the Australian Labor Party. Despite the fact that union membership declined from around one-half of the workforce in the early-1980s to one-quarter of the workforce in the early-2000s, unionists have not become more pro-Labor. Analysing unionists’ voting behaviour by gender, I find that male unionists were more pro-Labor than female unionists in the 1960s, but the reverse is true today. Recognising that union membership may be endogenous with respect to political ideology, I instrument for union membership and conclude that the observed association between union membership and voting reflects a causal relationship.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Leigh, 2006. "How Do Unionists Vote? Estimating the Causal Impact of Union Membership on Voting Behaviour from 1966 to 2004," CEPR Discussion Papers 516, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    • Handle: RePEc:auu:dpaper:516
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/CEPR/DP516.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew Leigh, 2005. "Economic Voting And Electoral Behavior: How Do Individual, Local, And National Factors Affect The Partisan Choice?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(2), pages 265-296, July.
    2. repec:bla:ecopol:v:17:y:2005:i::p:265-296 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jirjahn, Uwe & Le, Thi Xuan Thu, 2023. "Works Councils and Workers' Party Preferences in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 15879, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Uwe Jirjahn & Thi Xuan Thu Le, 2024. "Political spillovers of workplace democracy in Germany," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95(1), pages 5-31, March.
    3. González Felipe, 2013. "Can Land Reform Avoid a Left Turn? Evidence from Chile after the Cuban Revolution," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 31-72, April.
    4. Sinisa Hadziabdic & Lucio Baccaro, 2020. "A Switch or a Process? Disentangling the Effects of Union Membership on Political Attitudes in Switzerland and the UK," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(3), pages 466-499, July.
    5. Bradon Ellem, 2013. "Peak Union Campaigning: Fighting for Rights at Work in Australia," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 51(2), pages 264-287, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chang Wen-Chun, 2008. "Toward Independence or Unification?," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 124-153, January.
    2. Amy King & Andrew Leigh, 2010. "Bias at the Ballot Box? Testing Whether Candidates' Gender Affects Their Vote," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 91(2), pages 324-343, June.
    3. Samuel Adams & Kingsley S. Agomor, 2015. "Democratic politics and voting behaviour in Ghana," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 18(4), pages 365-381, December.
    4. Magnus Söderberg & Makoto Tanaka, 2012. "Spatial price homogeneity as a mechanism to reduce the threat of regulatory intervention in locally monopolistic sectors," Working Papers hal-00659458, HAL.
    5. Andrew Leigh, 2008. "Bringing home the bacon: an empirical analysis of the extent and effects of pork-barreling in Australian politics," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 279-299, October.
    6. Brunner, Eric & Ross, Stephen L. & Washington, Ebonya, 2008. "Economics and Ideology: Causal Evidence of the Impact of Economic Conditions on Support for Redistribution and Other Ballot Proposal," Working Papers 50, Yale University, Department of Economics.
    7. Mohamed Amara & AbdelRahmen El Lahga, 2016. "Tunisian constituent assembly elections: how does spatial proximity matter?," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 65-88, January.
    8. Mia, Rubel & Hasan, Mehedi & Joynal, Abedin Md, 2024. "Investigating Local Political Dynamics: A Case Study of the 2008 National Election in Bogura, Bangladesh," OSF Preprints vq647, Center for Open Science.
    9. Erzo F. P. Luttmer & Monica Singhal, 2011. "Culture, Context, and the Taste for Redistribution," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 157-179, February.
    10. Claus, Edda & Nguyen, Viet Hoang, 2018. "Consumptor economicus: How do consumers form expectations on economic variables?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 254-275.
    11. Eric Brunner & Stephen L. Ross & Ebonya Washington, 2013. "Does Less Income Mean Less Representation?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 53-76, May.
    12. Elinder, Mikael, 2010. "Local economies and general elections: The influence of municipal and regional economic conditions on voting in Sweden 1985-2002," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 279-292, June.
    13. Artés, Joaquín, 2014. "The rain in Spain: Turnout and partisan voting in Spanish elections," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 126-141.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    voting; elections; unions; endogeneity; instrumental variables;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • J51 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:auu:dpaper:516. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cpanuau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.