Credit and Voting

TL;DR

This paper investigates how uncertainty in credit access influences voting behavior in US elections, showing that higher credit access uncertainty correlates with increased conservative voting and rhetoric.

Contribution

It introduces exogenous measures of credit access uncertainty and links them to voting outcomes and candidate rhetoric in US elections from 2004 to 2016.

Findings

A 10 percentage point increase in marginal voters near credit thresholds raises Republican votes by 2.7 percentage points.

Uncertain credit access areas see more conservative candidate rhetoric.

Credit access uncertainty significantly impacts electoral outcomes.

Abstract

There is a tight connection between credit access and voting. We show that uncertainty in access to credit pushes voters toward more conservative candidates in US elections. Using a 1% sample of the US population with valid credit reports, we relate access to credit to voting outcomes in all county-by-congressional districts over the period 2004-2016. Specifically, we construct exogenous measures of uncertainty to credit access, i.e. credit score values around which individual total credit amount jumps the most (e.g. around which uncertainty on access to credit is the highest). We then show that a 10pp increase in the share of marginal voters located just around these thresholds increases republican votes by 2.7pp, and reduces that of democrats by 2.6pp. Furthermore, winning candidates in more uncertain constituencies tend to follow a more conservative rhetoric.