ORIGINAL PAPER Durable Democracy? Economic Inequality and Democratic Accountability in the New Gilded Age Benjamin J. Newman 1 • Thomas J. Hayes 2 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 Abstract Scholarship in the U.S. provides mounting evidence of a linkage between economic inequality and inequality in representation and policymaking. In response, this article addresses a research question striking at the very heart of the resilience of the democratic capitalist design: Do voters punish elected officials for inequality? We advance the argument that voter punishment of incumbents for inequality will occur when inequality is locally salient and for officeholders that support inequality- enhancing legislation. Relying upon secondary analysis of large-N national survey data, we find that voters residing in high inequality contexts voted against incum- bents who supported regressive tax policies and opposed minimum wage increases. Interestingly, for inequality-attenuating incumbents, we find increased support among voters in high inequality contexts. Importantly, robustness checks reveal that observed punishment effects hold for Democratic and Republican incumbents. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for American democracy in an era of rising inequality. Keywords Income inequality Á Electoral behavior Á Accountability Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11109-017-9435- 3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Thomas J. Hayes thomas.hayes@uconn.edu Benjamin J. Newman bnewman@ucr.edu 1 University of California, Riverside, Riverside, USA 2 University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA 123 Polit Behav DOI 10.1007/s11109-017-9435-3