Would winning $800 or more turn a liberal into a right-winger?

February 13, 2014
February 13, 2014

Is a conservative just a liberal with money? Apparently so, say UK economists with access to a huge data set of lottery winners.

Economists Andrew Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee adapted data from the British Household Panel Survey, which surveys 25,000 British adults each year on a variety of questions, including political preference and whether they have won the lottery. The two researchers looked at how the political preferences of lottery winners changed (pdf) in the years that they won the lottery, and found that those who had previously voted for the UK’s left-leaning political parties had a tendency to shift to the right—especially if they won more than £500 ($832), and especially if they were men.

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“The percentage of people who switched right (conservative), and previously did not vote conservative, after a lottery win.”

The researchers say they are working toward understanding how people obtain their political views, an important question in democratic societies that is under-explored. In this model, the common explanations for political views—pragmatic or ethical considerations—give way to self-interest: An unearned monetary windfall creates a four-percentage-points-greater chance of a previously non-conservative voter supporting a conservative politician.

On one hand, this shouldn’t surprise: In the United States, for instance, there’s long-standing evidence that wealthier voters disproportionately support the conservative Republican party. It’s obviously not an ironclad rule: There are wealthy liberals out there. But the question is which way the causation, if any, goes. Are rich people natural right-wingers or are right-wingers naturally rich? In this study, at least, it’s the wealth that shapes political views, not the virtues of the political views creating wealth.

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