Theory Of Retrospective Voting Research Articles

After a Storm Come Votes: Identifying the Effects of Disaster Relief on Electoral Outcomes

AbstractThe retrospective voting theory suggests that citizens vote for governing parties in response to distributive benefits. Knowing this, governments may reward voters by providing particularistic benefits—i.e., pork—prior to elections. Previous studies, however, do not account for the endogeneity. We address this problem by focusing on disaster relief and exploiting exogeneity of disaster. In particular, by using maximum hourly rainfall as an instrumental variable for disaster relief, we analyze the causal effect of disaster relief on incumbent’s electoral outcomes. Our analyses of Japanese data in the past few decades indicate that disaster relief increased governing parties’ vote share. Specifically, when the disaster relief per capita increases from zero to its mean, the predicted value of the governing parties’ vote share increases by 2.8 and 5.4% points in the lower and upper chambers, respectively. The finding is consistent with retrospective voting behavior. Moreover, our results imply that the incumbent’s electoral gain is brought about by persuading voters from oppositions to governing parties rather than by mobilizing supporters of governing parties.

Economic Voting Theory in the Philippines

The study examined how the performance of the politicians influences the voters’ decisions in the elections. The researchers modified Reed’s (1994) performance-based voting model to evaluate the performance of the politicians during their term in office. Since the model is a repeated election framework, the researchers focused on the senatorial elections during the Arroyo to Duterte administration (2004-2019) in the Philippines. The framework was used to determine whether the prospective or retrospective voting theories occurred in the elections and was able to compute for the value of the office of the politicians and evaluate their performance in office. The study showed that the retrospective voting theory occurred more than the prospective voting theory. It also showed that the citizens would vote for the senator regardless of their performance in office.

Old Tip vs. The Sly Fox: The 1840 Election and the Making of a Partisan Nation

Sophisticated political history is comprised of three overlapping but conceptually distinct elements—the unique, giving to the story its special flavor and identifying detail; the systematic, offering generalized context and causal explanation; and the original, indicating breaks in the time series and a precedent for future developments. Ellis’ account of the 1840 U.S. presidential election masterfully combines all three elements. The resulting volume is well-written and documented, articulate in presentation, rigorous in evidence, and plausible in argumentation.The 1840 presidential election is most often remembered for huge, raucous, popular demonstrations and distorted campaign appeals. The Whig Party portrayed its nominee, William Henry Harrison, as a great war hero from humble, log-cabin origins and denounced the Democratic incumbent, President Martin Van Buren, as pompous and out of touch. In the conventional version of the story, Van Buren’s defeat, ending twelve years of Democratic dominance, demonstrates the political potency of distracting hoopla and partisan vitriol.Ellis does not neglect the dynamics of 1840 presidential campaigning. In enormous detail, supported by more than 100 pages of endnotes, he traces the personal motivations and strategic calculations of the candidates and their supporters, from the struggle for nomination to the party conventions and ultimately to the presidential contest with its propaganda barrage by “cartoonists and wordsmiths” and a “veritable army of political speakers” (213). Nevertheless, Ellis’ explanatory emphasis lies elsewhere, in systematic rather than transitory factors. “All the songs and speeches, merriment and mud-slinging, mattered little,” he writes; by the time the American people became attentive, “the election, for all intents and purposes, had already been decided” (233). As shown in much social-science research, subjective party identification tends to be the most important determinant of voting preference. Few voters know, or even care, about the specifics of public policies. The causal arrow generally goes from party allegiance to policy stance and from party allegiance to symbolic assent, not the other way around (262).Significant deviation from partisan regularity is most often the consequence of economic expansion or contraction. Retrospective voting theory posits that elections are, to a large extent, referenda upon incumbents, attributing to them responsibility for national successes or failures. Unfortunately for Democratic Party prospects, the financial Panic of 1837 was especially painful. Ellis carefully correlates the downs and ups of economic depression, partial recovery, and renewed recession with the results garnered by the competing political parties at the polls, examined across the large number of state and district elections preceding the national contest. His first-rate analysis—a model of how to leverage the available historical data—concludes that the outcome in 1840 was rigorously predictable, depending less on deluded voters than on retrospectively calculating ones.Finally, the book highlights those political trends first appearing, or appearing to the perceptive observer, during the 1840 election. The study of interdisciplinary history has often focused upon situating events in time, investigating patterns, regularities, innovations, and breakpoints in a sequence. As featured in Ellis’ account, 1840 saw the first nominating conventions that did more than simply ratify the decisions by party leaders. For the first time, candidates abandoned the ostensible passivity of their back porch to pursue votes actively. Party organization strengthened, and populist appeals expanded. Slavery showed the first signs of disrupting intersectional party alliances. Voter turnout was much higher than ever before, for first time surpassing that of state and local elections. The 1840 election, beyond mere carnival-style entertainment, provided a distinct step in the development of a more presidentially centered U.S. politics.If the book is subject to any criticism, it would be that most of the formal social science is confined to the endnotes. This choice seems mistaken. Ellis may have felt that excursions into the language of contemporary social science might have disrupted the narrative flow. If so, he could have placed the formal analysis in boxed inserts or chapter appendixes. The study of interdisciplinary history entails the subtle merging of academically separate subfields. An adjustment to their balance in this book would have added yet another dimension to an otherwise excellent analysis.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ВИБОРЧОЇ КАМПАНІЇ У США: ТЕОРІЯ І ПРАКТИКА КАМПАНІЇ 2014 РОКУ

The proposed article analyzes the motives for voter behaviour before and during the election. It is stated that understanding the patterns of their actions greatly mitigates the surprise of the election results. Recently, political scientists, sociologists, and analysts have learned a great deal about how voters actually make decisions that have a final impact on their choices, how important their views are for understanding democratic responsibility and social well-being. However, these studies have provoked more open-ended questions than answers. In the fall of 2014, the United States held by-elections to Congress. Scientists have another chance to test their versions of the American election results, to monitor the electoral behaviour patterns, to predict the results. Of particular interest, in terms of results, there is the behaviour of a voter known as swing voter. The article analyzes the social status of voters in this group, indicates the possible reasons for changing their electoral positions. Our study is based on a descriptive method and a method of systematic analysis of a number of procedures for collecting, primary analysis, and presentation of data and their characteristics. Administratively, we have focused our attention on the North-Eastern states, the findings of the study should be used responsibly to the situation in other regions of the country. The basic methodology is the most popular in the United States theory of retrospective voting. Its essence is that the political results should correspond to the indicators of competence and efficiency of the elected officials.

ТЕОРИЯ РЕТРОСПЕКТИВНОГО ГОЛОСОВАНИЯ:

В последние годы в области объяснения поведения избирателей произошел ренессанс, в значительной степени обусловленный неожиданными исходами выборов. За минувшие пять лет ученые многое узнали о том, как избиратели на самом деле принимают решения и что их поведение подразумевает для демократической ответственности и общественного благосостояния. Тем не менее, эти достижения в области знаний также породили больше открытых вопросов, чем ответов. Ретроспективное голосование – это концепция в американской политической науке, суть которой сводиться к тому, что общество может оценивает прошлую политическую деятельность правительства. Избиратели рассматривают деятельность правительства по таким критериям как эффективность экономики, системы уголовного правосудия, социальной стабильности, экологические и медицинские результаты в сроки, установленные выборами (2-4 года), а потом через голосование на выборах граждане формулируют более успешные правительства.В Украине данная тема практически никогда не была освещена. Цель этой статьи дать системную оценку теории ретроспективного голосования, как ведущей теории современных электоральных демократий. Цель статьи была достигнута с помощью метода системного анализа.

The abiding voter: The lengthy horizon of retrospective evaluations

AbstractAlthough the theory of retrospective voting receives wide support in the literature on voting behaviour, less agreement exists on voters’ time horizon when assessing the government's performance – that is, whether voters are myopic. Previous studies on voter myopia tend to focus on aggregate‐level measures of the economy, or use an experimental approach. Using panel data, this article offers the first investigation into voter myopia that uses individual‐level evaluations of government performance in a representative survey at several points during the electoral cycle. The study focuses on The Netherlands, but it also provide tests of the generalisability and robustness of the findings, and a replication in the American context. The results indicate that voter satisfaction early in the government's term adds to explaining incumbent voting. Thus, rather than the myopic voter, evidence is found of the abiding voter – steady at her or his post, evaluating government performance over a long length of time.

Retrospective voting in Georgia: does the government's past performance matter?

ABSTRACTVoters are often assumed to be of tertiary importance in less than democratic contexts – the regime can manipulate, buy, or outright steal their votes goes the predominant logic. This article however shows that voters not only matter but engaged in retrospective voting in Georgia, a country with imperfect political competition, between 2008 and 2015. Analysis of two waves of nationally representative survey data from 2012 to 2015 supports the retrospective voting theory, with a positive relationship between voter support for the incumbent party and positive assessments of government policies related to socio-economic, democratization, and security issues. Citizens who assess government policies negatively are more prone to voting for opposition candidates or not voting at all compared to those who are more satisfied with the government's performance in Georgia. Notably, these findings are very similar for two governments led by two very different parties in Georgia: the United National Movement (2008–2012) and Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgia (since 2012). Hence, I conclude that disregarding voters’ preferences has negative consequences for the legitimation and survival of the incumbent.

Using Online Search Traffic to Predict US Presidential Elections

Predictions of the United States presidential election vote outcome have been growing in scope and popularity in the academic realm. Traditional election forecasting models predict the United States presidential popular vote outcome on a national level based primarily on economic indicators (e.g., real income growth, unemployment), public approval ratings, and incumbency advantage. Many of these forecasting models are rooted in retrospective voting theory (Downs 1957; Fiorina 1981), essentially rewarding the party in office if times are good, punishing it if times are bad. These models have successfully predicted election results by modeling economic performance and incumbent approval ratings (Campbell 2012; Fair 1992; Fair 1996; Klarner 2012). For example, Abramowitz's (2004; 2005) “time for a change model” predicts election results using economic performance during the first half of the election year, the number of years the incumbent party has been in office, and presidential approval. For a full review of 13 presidential forecasts for the US 2012 election, seePS: Political Science and PoliticsOctober 2012 (45 (4): 610–75). Although national models are the most common, researchers have also started to use state-level predictions for presidential and congressional outcomes, with mostly positive success (Berry and Bickers 2012; Jerome and Jerome-Speziari 2012; Klarner 2012; Silver 2012). These models use similar predictors, such as incumbency, economic conditions, and home-state advantage, and predict the per-candidate percentage of popular vote. Unfortunately, with state-level models, many of the economic variables used in predicting national models are unavailable beyond 10–15 election cycles (compounded also by 1959 additions of Alaska and Hawaii), so state-level models naturally have a shorter period of analysis than do national models.

Economy, Ideology, and the Elephant in the Room: A Research Note on the Elections of the Great Recession in Europe

The electoral performance of incumbent in legislative elections in Europe since the beginning of the Great Recession has been described in two contrasting ways. For some, it has been characterized by an anti-leftist wave, signalling a change in voters fundamental preferences against leftist and policies. For others, ideology has had little to do with recent events: instead, voters have simply punished incumbents for bad performances and rewarded them for good ones, as a simple retrospective voting theory would suggest. Looking at the electoral performance of Prime Ministers' from January 2008 until today, the paper shows that results are, instead, most compatible with a luxury parties hypothesis: under conditions of low or negative growth, leftist incumbents have done significantly worse than rightist ones, while, for those countries where growth resumed, leftist incumbents have done significantly better. Furthermore, the paper suggests that part of the continued decline in the electoral performance of incumbents in many countries observed until today is fundamentally a Eurozone phenomenon: voters in those countries seem to be turning their dissatisfaction with the protracted financial, currency, and political crisis in the Eurozone to the target more at hand - i.e., national governments - punishing them increasingly and above and beyond what developments in the domestic economic would justify.

Retrospective Voting in Presidential Primaries

Though retrospectiveperformance evaluations are now widely appreciated as a major influence on voting in general elections, their influence in presidentialprimaries has rarely been noticed. U sing exit polls conducted by major media organizations over the last nine election cycles, this article shows that retrospective voting is an important, indeed dominant, factor in two types of situations: when an incumbent president is running for reelection, and when an incumbent vice president is seeking to become his party's next presidential candidate. Thisfinding, inturn, helps explain two significant institutional features of the contemporary presidential nomination process: why most recent presidents have been renominated without much difficulty, and why the vice presidency has become such a good launching pad for presidential candidacies. How do voters make reasonably intelligent voting decisions, given that most of them are not terribly interested in politics, follow it only intermittently, and therefore do not have a great deal of information about the candidates and their issue positions? Political scientists have developed a number of answers to this question, but perhaps the most commonly invoked is the notion of retrospective voting. According to this theory, voters are less concerned with a candidate's or party's promises about future policy than with their past performance in office, particularly their success or failure in achieving such hard, tangible outcomes as peace and prosperity. Whereas information about campaign promises is costly to acquire and difficult to evaluate, most citizens develop relatively solid perceptions about the performance of an incumbent officeholder or administration simply by going about their normal lives and paying a minimal amount of attention to the news. The body of scholarly work bearing out the general theory of retrospective voting is, by now, quite large. The two most influential statements are V. O. Key's The Responsible

Obama and the Economy in 2008

We believe the economy was much on voters' minds in the 2008 presidential election. More formally, a traditional economic retrospective voting theory—electors disapprove of past economic conditions and vote against the government—should serve well as an explanation of Obama's victory (Fiorina 1981; Lewis-Beck 1988, 34).

Evaluating U.S. presidential election forecasts and forecasting equations

This article examines four problems with past evaluations of presidential election forecasting and suggests one aspect of the models that could be improved. Past criticism has had problems with establishing an overall appraisal of the forecasting equations, in assessing the accuracy of both the forecasting models and their forecasts of individual election results, in identifying the theoretical foundations of forecasts, and in distinguishing between data-mining and learning in model revisions. I contend that overall assessments are innately arbitrary, that benchmarks can be established for reasonable evaluations of forecast accuracy, that blanket assessments of forecasts are unwarranted, that there are strong (but necessarily limited) theoretical foundations for the models, and that models should be revised in the light of experience, while remaining careful to avoid data-mining. The article also examines the question of whether current forecasting models grounded in retrospective voting theory should be revised to take into account the partial-referendum nature of non-incumbent, open-seat elections such as the 2008 election.

US presidential election forecasting: An introduction

The modern era of election forecasting is now almost thirty years old. Like many significant developments in science, it began as separate streams of work occurring at around the same time: the investigations of Lee Sigelman (1979), Michael Lewis-Beck and Tom Rice (1982), Richard Brody and Sigelman (1983) on the relationship between presidential approval ratings and the vote; economist Ray Fair's (1978) work on the predictive strength of the economy and presidential incumbency for the vote; Steven Rosenstone's (1983) construction of a forecasting model for the presidential vote in the States; the identification by geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok and historian Allan Lichtman (1981) of thirteen general indicators or “keys” for foretelling the outcome of presidential elections. Soon thereafter, Michael Lewis-Beck and Tom Rice (1984) combined the presidential approval ratings with an indicator of economic conditions to create a core forecasting equation based on retrospective voting theory. Alan Abramowitz (1988) later added to this core idea his “time for a change” consideration of the number of consecutive terms that the president's political

Retrospective Voting and Future Expectations

According to theories of retrospective voting, voters hold an incumbent administration responsible for problems or achievements that occur during its term. During the Reagan administrations, the deficit was one such problem. In this article, the interplay between the deficit issue and the voting decision is investigated. The major findings of this study are the following: (a) The deficit was a salient issue in 1988, and for many voters it was the most important problem facing the nation; (b) voters recognized that the deficit was a Reagan-era phenomenon; (c) an individual's perception of which party was better able to solve the deficit problem strongly influenced the vote; (d) many thought the Republican Party would better manage the deficit issue in the future. Thus Republicans suffered very little at the ballot box as a result of the issue. Future refinements of retrospective-voting theory must take into account this failure to hold the incumbent party accountable for problems encountered during its term.

Voting in India: Effects of Economic Change and New Party Formation

Like voters elsewhere in the world, Indian voters live in a political environment of conflicting influences, some of which encourage political continuity while others promote change. How do they choose, and why do they change their votes from one election to another? Does Indian voting behavior support prospective or retrospective voting theory? India has had ten general elections to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament, from 1951 to 1991. The Congress Party, usually led by Jawaharlal Nehru or one of his descendants, has won eight of them but failed in two-1977 and 1989. Although the Congress Party got 49.3% of the vote in 1984 and only 34.5% in 1977, a range of about 15%, the fluctuation has usually been only about 5% between 40% and 45%. These fluctuations are most commonly attributed to various public activities,' e.g., Indira Gandhi's promise to get rid of poverty in 1971, her repressive and autocratic rule before the 1977 election, internal strife in the Janata Party before the 1979 election, sympathy for the party of an assassinated leader in the 1984 (Indira) and 1991 (Rajiv Gandhi) elections, and governmental corruption in 1989. Such issue-oriented explanations may be intuitively persuasive, and indeed may sometimes be correct, but they leave a key question unanswered: why do these issues or conditions become salient in some elections and not others? Political parties often have promised to solve economic problems; both the Congress and Janata par-

Attributing Presidential Responsibility for National Economic Problems

Several recent studies of economic voting have challenged a central assumption of the reward-punishment theory of retrospective voting, that voters hold the incumbent party responsible for all manner of economic fluctuations. Our research expands on prior work in several ways by specifying and testing a model of the way people attribute responsibility to presidents for national economic problems. We find that during the 1982 recession, President Reagan was spared the wrath of the reward-punishment theory among individuals who felt that economic problems were more the fault of the previous administration, that presidents have relatively little control over the causes of inflation and unemployment, and that past presidents were unable to control these same problems. Implications for retrospective voting theories and the outcome of the 1982 midterm elections are discussed.