Economics and the left party vote in Scandinavia: A cross-national analysis

While the literature on economic voting is vast, relatively little is known about how the economy affects party vote shares in Scandinavia per se. Thi s article argues that left of center parties rather than incumbent governme nts per se bear the brunt of economic judgments at the voting booth. In lar ge part this is due to these parties' preeminent role in establishing and m aintaining the institutional welfare systems of these countries. We examine this hypothesis using pooled time-series data for Denmark, Finland, Norway , and Sweden from 1960 to 1991.