The economy and the dynamics of the 2008 presidential campaign: Evidence from the National Annenberg Election study

This paper considers the impact of economic perceptions on vote intention in the 2008 presidential campaign with data from the two components of the National Annenberg Election Survey. It addresses a controversy over whether the collapse of Lehman Brothers and its aftermath altered the terms of competition, and produced the late-campaign widening of Barack Obama's lead and his comfortable victory. Detailed attention to the chronology of the campaign, made possible by the structure of NAES data collection, indicates that the timing of key shifts is inconsistent with a simple economic interpretation of vote-intention dynamics. Multivariate analyses indicate that the economy-vote link weakened at the critical point.