Replication Data for: Incumbents Beware: The Impact of offshoring on elections

How does globalization affect politics? One of the most controversial aspects of globalization is offshoring, when manufacturing operations and business functions move abroad. Although voters generally dislike offshoring, it remains unclear how the movement of jobs abroad impacts democratic elections. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, I find incumbent government parties lose more votes in municipalities where a local plant moved production abroad between elections than in municipalities without such an event. This result holds across various time periods, different incumbent parties, and diverse types of elections. In both national and regional elections, voters punish incumbent government parties when a local firm moves production abroad. Incumbent parties’ vote shares fall as the number of jobs lost due to offshoring increases. In multi-party governments, voters disproportionately punish the largest coalition party for offshoring. Results from an original survey in Spain verify the importance of offshoring for voters' retrospective evaluation of incumbents.