American voter to economic voter: Evolution of an idea

That The American Voter has had, and continues to have, a profound influence on the study of political behavior goes without saying. However, that influence has not touched all its subfields. Oddly, it has had next to no impact in investigations of economic voting. This peculiarity is striking, because the book has an extensive chapter on the topic, Chapter 14 entitled “The Economic Antecedents of Political Behavior.” Furthermore, in Chapter 14, the major theories and findings known today are laid out. Here we document this fact, then trace the “loss” of this potentially seminal essay. We conclude with a plausible explanation for this loss, and suggest a new direction economic voting research might take, based on revived attention to this neglected contribution.