Lago Peñas, SantiagoCadabal Sampedro, MaríaHerrero-Alcalde, Ana2025-03-052025-03-052024Lago‐Peñas, S., Cadaval‐Sampedro, M., & Herrero‐Alcalde, A. (2024). Fiscal consolidation and voting: on the electoral costs of budgetary stability. Fiscal Studies, 45(4), 559-581. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.123640143-5671https://hdl.handle.net/10347/40080In this paper, we analyse the potential impact of policies aimed at fostering fiscal sustainability on citizens’ preferences. A survey specifically designed for this purpose quantifies citizens’ knowledge and concern about fiscal imbalances and the institutional framework that addresses them in Spain, and their possible electoral reactions to public spending cuts and tax increases. Using both ordered and unordered multinomial probit models, we corroborate that citizens tend to disapprove of retrenchment policies. However, the effect on citizens’ voting intentions varies depending on their political ideology. We confirm that left-wing voters supporting the incumbent coalition parties prefer austerity policies based on the revenue side of the budget, while right-wing voters tend to approve retrenchments based on the expenditure side to a larger extent.engThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. © 2024 The Author(s). Fiscal Studies published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Institute for Fiscal StudiesAttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/DeficitFiscal adjustmentFiscal austerityElectoral impactPublic spendingTaxesjournal article10.1111/1475-5890.123641475-5890open access