A model of party popularity for multi-party systems is presented and applied to the Netherlands. Main conclusions are: first, inflation and unemployment and their interaction affect the popularity of parties; second, it is important to take into account that voters may reckon with a trade-off between these variables; third, it is wrong to handle a coalition government as a homogeneous entity.
The research reported in this paper is part of the project 
Economic Policy and Conflicts of Interests
of the University of Amsterdam (PEPCI-paper 85.14). Financial support from the Netherlands Organisation for the Advancement of Pure Research (ZWO) is gratefully acknowledged.