Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1916858 Social Assistance Policies, Economic Crisis, and the Presidential Vote in Latin America 1 By Matthew L. Layton and Amy Erica Smith matthew.l.layton@vanderbilt.edu / amy.e.smith@vanderbilt.edu Vanderbilt University Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Seattle, WA 2 September 2011 1 We are grateful to the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) at Vanderbilt University and its major supporters (the United States Agency for International Development, the United Nations Development Program, the Inter-American Development Bank, and Vanderbilt University) for making the data available. All analysis and conclusions presented here represent the opinions of the authors, and are not the responsibility of LAPOP. The data employed here can be found at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/survey-data.php. A preliminary version of the analysis will appear as No. 66 in the AmericasBarometer Insights series on September 26, 2011. We thank Mitch Seligson, Liz Zechmeister, and participants in a LAPOP workshop for very helpful comments on that report.