The most consistent lever of pre-election manipulation was the minimum wage, which rose more than average in all four pre-vote periods.
Based on the theoretical expectations about opportunistic manipulation of the economy before elections, we should expect higher levels of government expenditure in the pre-election periods.
In the second model, post-election attitudes are estimated as a function of pre-election attitudes.
The darker line indicates those respondents who participated in both waves while the lighter line indicates those who only participated in the pre-election wave.
In the pre-election survey no neutral category is offered.
More substantial changes in attitudes are evident between the pre-election and post-election observations.
As in 1972, pre-election trust and evaluations of the health of the macroeconomy turned out to be significant predictors of trust in government in 1996.
Rather, change is modelled by controlling for pre-election attitudes in the model predicting post-election attitudes.
