POLICY VISIBILITY IN A POLARIZED AGE: GOVERNMENT STIMULUS AND ELECTORAL ACCOUNTABILITY IN THE UNITED STATES

Abstract

This thesis examines how the visibility of government economic intervention conditions electoral feedback for incumbent political parties. I compare two major federal policies that distributed economic benefits through different mechanisms: the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a highly visible and easily attributable stimulus implemented under the Trump administration, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a less visible policy that distributed benefits indirectly through tax credits and long-term investments under the Biden administration. Using a county-level dataset of 3,106 counties and fixed effects regression models, I analyze whether variation in stimulus exposure is associated with changes in incumbent vote share and voter turnout across the 2016–2020 and 2020–2024 presidential elections. The results provide limited evidence that visible stimulus produces measurable electoral rewards for incumbents, and no consistent evidence that less visible stimulus affects voting behavior or turnout. These findings suggest that in a highly polarized political environment, baseline partisan alignment overwhelms material policy feedback, rendering policy visibility alone insufficient to generate meaningful electoral reward.