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Title : "Layoffs,Pocketbooks, and Partisan Hooks"

Abstract : Rising partisanship has increasinglyled voters to prioritize partisan alignment over pocketbook interests at theballot box in recent decades. We examine this question, both empirically andtheoretically, in the context of U.S. mass layoffs from 1995 to 2012, wherepocketbook considerations are expected to prevail strongly. Exploitingwithin-county variation, we document pro-partisan vote shifts in partisanstates: a 1% county workforce layoff raises the Democratic presidentialtwo-party vote share by 0.26 percentage points in blue-state counties andlowers it by 0.19 percentage points in red-state counties, alongside classicpocketbook punishment of incumbents in contested states. These findings arerationalized by a model in which layoffs trigger retrospective pocketbookaccountability that hurts incumbents while amplifying partisan hooks throughgreater exposure to prevailing state-specific partisan slants in media andlocal social environments. Microevidence from survey data, time-use surveys,and Google Trends supports these mechanisms.