‘Victory has a thousand fathers,” the saying goes, and in close elections everyone can come up with a reason why a particular politician lost — turnout, local issues, character, poor debating performance, etc. Few Republicans, however, lost on the economy this year. With economic growth around the country very strong and unemployment at a historic low of 4.4 percent (a “November surprise” that should have helped Republicans), why didn’t voters reward incumbents? What makes the people vote something other than their pocketbooks?

Personal misconduct by individual members of Congress — alleged or proven — rightly disgusted many voters. The Iraq issue obviously played a role in some key races. And it’s also true that some winning Democratic candidates are on the moderate-to-conservative side of the party. (Brad Ellsworth, who beat Republican John Hostettler in Indiana, actually took Americans for Tax Reform’s “no tax increases” pledge; Heath Shuler in North Carolina may be another former pro quarterback who supports lower taxes.) Did many Republican candidates do a poor job of trumpeting the economic good news? Simply, yes.

How about looks?

The Washington Post wrote in October that “Democrats seem to be fielding an uncommonly high number of uncommonly good-looking candidates.” And the day before the election, the Post was at it again, noting that “Elections are supposed to be about issues . . . but a number of ingenious experiments show that how a politician looks and comes across to voters can make a huge difference in the outcome of an election.”

In a study conducted for the National Bureau of Economic Research by Daniel Benjamin of the University of Michigan and Jesse Shapiro of the University of Chicago, volunteers watched 10-second video clips of gubernatorial candidates, with the sound off, for races between 1998 and 2002. The result? They chose the winners with a high degree of probability. As the Post noted, “The idea that better knowledge does not always improve judgment is sobering but aligns with previous research.”

Benjamin took his conclusions even further, noting that “Economists have focused on the performance of the economy under the incumbent. Those factors explain at most 10 percent of the variation in the election outcome and probably much less, whereas the personal factors explain between 20-30 percent.”

But why? The answer lies in the politics of abundance and how this affects personal behavior.

This theory has a long history. Anthropologists note that ancient Egypt began its cultural rise only after food supplies were secured. At the turn of the 20th century, Thorstein Veblen wrote something similar in his Theory of the Leisure Class, pointing out that richer societies had “higher-status” groups that were responsible for such things as art and culture, while poor societies could not spare the funds and manpower for these artistic luxuries.

Veblen’s famous phrase, “conspicuous consumption,” can apply to politics, too. The irony is that a strong economy can allow issues other than the economy to rise in importance for voters. When people feel richer, they worry less about the economy and their own personal futures.

This is one reason why the Conference Board’s reports on consumer confidence are so eagerly awaited by Wall Street. When the people believe that their basic place in the economy remains relatively secure — in 2006, this meant that people evidently did not believe Republican warnings that a Democratic Congress would lead to higher taxes — they make decisions based on non-economic issues. This is a luxury.

Rather than necessarily giving credit to incumbents, a strong economy permits people the greater luxury of “throwing the bums out” over other issues, which can include personal likes and dislikes, and even (if you believe the Benjamin-Shapiro study) candidates’ looks and charisma.

These observations are not meant to criticize democracy. As Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. The good news is that voters will still throw out politicians if they mishandle a good economy, just as was the case in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan. Voters have now given the Democrats a huge opportunity, but scholarship and common sense tell us that their trust can be withdrawn on a moment’s notice, and certainly before the 2008 elections.

– Mallory Factor is chairman of the Free Enterprise Fund.