THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY VOLUME 68 DECEMBER 2008 NUMBER 4 Ordinary Economic Voting Behavior in the Extraordinary Election of Adolf Hitler GARY KING, ORI ROSEN, MARTIN TANNER, AND ALEXANDER F. WAGNER The enormous Nazi voting literature rarely builds on modern statistical or economic research. By adding these approaches, we find that the most widely accepted existing theories of this era cannot distinguish the Weimar elections from almost any others in any country. Via a retrospective voting account, we show that voters most hurt by the depression, and most likely to oppose the government, fall into separate groups with divergent interests. This explains why some turned to the Nazis and others turned away. The consequences of Hitler’s election were extraordinary, but the voting behavior that led to it was not. ow did free and fair democratic elections lead to the extraordinary H antidemocratic Nazi Party winning control of the Weimar Republic? The profound implications of this question have led “Who voted for Hitler?” to be the most studied question in the history of voting behavior research. Indeed, understanding who voted for Hitler is The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 68, No. 4 (December 2008). © The Economic History Association. All rights reserved. ISSN 0022-0507. Gary King is David Florence Professor of Government, Department of Government, Harvard University, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail:
[email protected]. Ori Rosen is Associate Professor, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso, Bell Hall 221, El Paso, TX 79968. E-mail:
[email protected].