Hearing the Voice of the Future: Trump vs Clinton

Professor Narita examines the impact of decreasing birth rates and aging populations on outcomes of political elections.

Using a model that weights votes based on age, Professor Narita analyzes the 2016 U.S. presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. He finds that, when weighting by life-expectancy, the 2016 election results favor Hillary Clinton.

Abstract and Citation

NARITA Yusuke, 2019. "Hearing the Voice of the Future: Trump vs Clinton," Discussion papers 19025, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).

Abstract

Many countries face growing concerns that population aging may make voting and policy-making myopic. This concern begs for electoral reform to better reflect voices of the youth, such as weighting votes by voters' life expectancy. This paper predicts the effect of the counterfactual electoral reform on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Using the American National Election Studies (ANES) data, I find that Hillary Clinton would have won the election if votes were weighted by life expectancy. I also discuss limitations due to data issues.

Publication Link

https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/19025.html

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