The Determinants of Vote Intentions in Portugal

This paper offers new insights on the interactions between economics and politics in Portugal. We use two unexplored data sets consisting of monthly polls on vote intentions for the main political parties in Portugal and responses to a consumer survey containing a battery of questions on economic evaluations. The analysis covers the interval from 1986 to 2001. We find that: (1) right-wing governments are penalized for higher inflation while the left-wing ones are not, (2) left-wing governments are more penalized for increases in the unemployment rate; (3) voters base their evaluations of incumbents' performances on perceptions of past and current economic conditions, rather than on expected future economic outcomes