The Economy The War In Iraq And The 2004 Presidential Election

Download or read book The Economy, the War in Iraq and the 2004 Presidential Election written by Douglas A. Hibbs and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper I apply the Bread and Peace model of voting in US presidential elections to analyze the sources of George W. Bush's narrow re-election victory in 2004. The aggregate election outcome is readily explained by the model's objectively measured political-economic fundamentals - no appeal need be made to arbitrary count, trend, dummy and switching variables. The results imply that the 2004 election turned mainly on weighted-average growth of per capita real disposable personal income over the term. The war in Iraq, which has escalated dramatically in political relevance since the 2004 contest, had a relatively small impact on the election result, most likely depressing Bush's two-party vote share by less than a half percentage point.