Voting: Retrospective/Prospective

Abstract

The theory of retrospective voting holds that voters decide to retain or reject incumbent politicians primarily on the basis of objective conditions—in particular economic conditions—that have obtained during their tenure in office. Analyses of economic time series and voting data have produced overwhelming evidence as to the existence of economic retrospective voting, but also show that it is not a ubiquitous phenomenon. In the USA, favorable economic conditions clearly benefit the incumbent president and congressional candidates of his party in on-year elections, but have a much smaller impact upon midterm elections. The strength of economic retrospective voting is also a function of ‘clarity of responsibility’ in the institutions of government. Thus, it is stronger and more consistent in some countries than in others. Other researchers have investigated the nature of retrospective voting by analyzing opinion surveys. They have found that whether or not respondents are personally doing well or poorly economically has a surprisingly weak impact upon their reported voting decisions. The choice to retain or to reject the present incumbents is instead conditioned much more strongly upon their assessments of recent trends in the nation's economy. Consistent with the aggregate-level evidence, opinion surveys have also shown economic retrospective voting to be stronger in countries with more clarity of responsibility. In such countries, the voters' task of establishing credit or blame is presumably more straightforward.