The success of major college teams in the two weeks before an election can have a measurable impact on how well incumbent politicians do at the polls in the US, researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Events that government had nothing to do with, but that affect voters' sense of well-being, can affect the decisions that they make on election day," the researchers said.
That's why incumbent politicians try to score some good news just before elections, and their opponents try to block that effort.
The new study looked at US elections for president, governor and senate between 1964 and 2008 and compared them to football results for 62 major college teams. The researchers found that wins in the two weeks before an election boosted the vote share of incumbents in the county where a school is located by 1.05 to 1.47 percentage points — enough to make a difference in a close race.
And for teams they termed "powerhouses" the impact was even greater, giving the incumbents between 2.30 and 2.42 percentage points more than in years when the local team lost. Powerhouses were defined as teams that had won a national football championship since 1964, or were among the teams with average attendance of 70,000 or more from 1998 to 2008.
Neil Malhotra, an assistant professor of political economy at Stanford University, and colleagues, decided to look at the relationship between football and politics because they wondered if elections were affected by "irrelevant" information.
There has been a lot of discussion of the rationality of the American public when it comes to voting, Malhotra said in a telephone interview, but there have also been studies indicating people can be "predictably irrational." For example, a prior study looked at disasters such as floods and hurricanes, and found that people later tended to vote against incumbents.
"Just because government didn't cause the problem doesn't mean people won't hold them responsible," Malhotra observed.
But, in a disaster, governments do tend to get involved, at least afterward.
So the researchers turned to an area even more unrelated to government: sports.
It tends to be a subconscious response, Malhotra explained, with people making a decision on whom to vote for acting on their mood. The effect tends to disappear when the bias is brought to people's attention, he added.
The study did not report results by individual school or conference, but combined the results from 1964 to 2008 to incorporate winning and losing years and several elections.
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AP Photo LON101 By JILL LAWLESS= Associated Press= LONDON: Like millions of her subjects, Queen Elizabeth II is going to have to make do and mend — cutting spending and putting off palace repairs as royal finances are squeezed by Britain's budget crisis.
Accounts published Monday by Buckingham Palace reveal the total public cost of supporting the monarchy was 38.2 million pounds ($57.8 million) in the year to March 31, the equivalent of 62 pence (94 cents) per person. The total is more than 3 million pounds less than in 2008-2009.
Britain's public sector is facing cuts as the government tries to eliminate a record deficit, and Alan Reid, Keeper of the Privy Purse, said the royal household "is acutely aware of the difficult economic climate" and will be cutting costs and putting off essential maintenance.
The 84-year-old queen receives 7.9 million pounds of public money each year to pay for staff and other costs, an amount that has not risen in 20 years. The accounts show also drew an extra 6.5 million pounds from a reserve fund built up over the years by saving portions of her allocated budget.
If the queen continues to use money from her reserve at the current rate, the fund will run out by 2012 — the year she celebrates her 60th year on the throne.
She had been expected to ask for an increase in basic funding this year, but the government — which is bringing in deep cuts to welfare payments and spending programs — imposed a freeze until at least next year.
The accounts show the government spent more than 15 million pounds on the upkeep of royal residences including Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, and almost 4 million pounds on royal travel. Both amounts were down from the previous year.
Reid said the royal household would be cutting its property services budget by half a million pounds, "implementing a head count freeze and reviewing every vacancy to see if we can avoid replacement." He said "the necessary cuts in public expenditure will have an impact on the backlog of essential maintenance which it is hoped can be addressed in the longer term." "In the meantime, the household is continuing to pursue opportunities to reduce costs and generate income from the estate's assets, including commercial lettings and management charges," he said.
News of the royal cost-cutting did not satisfy the anti-monarchy group Republic, which held a protest outside Buckingham Palace on Monday.
Campaign manager Graham Smith said Britain's monarchy was the most expensive in Europe, and "continues to waste many millions of pounds of taxpayers' money when front line services are being threatened." "It's time to slash the budgets without reservation or sentiment," he said.
