Inequality and Electoral Accountability: Class-Biased Economic Voting in Comparative Perspective

Do electorates hold governments accountable for the distribution of economic welfare? Building on the finding of class-biased economic voting in the United States, we examine how electorates in advanced democracies respond to alternative distributions of income gains and losses. Drawing on individual-level electoral data and aggregate election results across 15 countries, we examine whether lower- and middle-income voters defend their distributive interests by punishing governments for concentrating income gains among the rich. We find no indication that non-rich voters punish rising inequality and substantial evidence that electorates positively reward the concentration of aggregate income growth at the top. Our results suggest that governments commonly face political incentives systematically skewed in favor of inegalitarian economic outcomes. At the same time, we find that the electorate's tolerance of rising inequality has its limits: class biases in economic voting diminish as the income shares of the rich grow in magnitude.