Replication Data for: Mind the Gap: Why Wealthy Voters Support Brexit

Wealth provides self-insurance against financial risk, reducing risk-aversion. We apply this insurance mechanism to electoral behaviour, arguing that a voter who has a desire for a change to the status quo -- and who is wealthy -- is more likely to vote for that change than a voter who lacks the same self-insurance. We apply this argument to the case of Brexit in the UK, which has been widely characterized as a vote by the ‘economically left-behind’. Our results show that individuals who lacked wealth are less likely to support leaving the EU, explaining why so many Brexit voters were wealthy, in terms of their property wealth. We corroborate our theory using two separate panel surveys, accounting for unobserved individual level heterogeneity, and using a survey experiment. The findings have implications for the potential wider role of wealth-as-insurance in electoral behavior, and for understanding the Brexit case.