Policymakers increasingly rely on subjective well-being or happiness metrics to gauge societal progress. But does this matter politically?

Context: This analysis uses a long-run panel dataset of European elections spanning four decades.

Analysis Approach: Comparing the predictive power of well-being metrics against standard macroeconomic indicators for election results and voting intentions.

Findings: National measures of happiness consistently explain more variance in governing party vote share than traditional GDP or unemployment data. Similar patterns emerge at individual voter levels, both cross-sectionally and over time.

Why It Matters: These insights highlight the growing political salience of subjective well-being metrics as a predictor of electoral behavior across diverse European contexts.