Acceso usuarios
Christopher Wlezien
Most scholars of the economy and the vote assume that voters are myopic and focus only on events during the election year. Some take an alternative view and posit that voters are more far-sighted and take into account earlier information. Who is right? This paper addresses the time horizon of economic voting focusing on US presidential elections between 1952 and 2012. The analysis considers whether voters respond to economic change at different points in the election cycle using two objective indicators—income growth and the gross domestic product—as well as a subjective measure of business conditions. The results using each of these measures reveal that voters do not react only to very late economic events or to what happens over the entire election cycle, but that they respond equally to developments during the last two years of a presidential term. The finding contrasts with the dominant approaches in the literature and makes clear that scholars should settle on functional form based on careful empirical analysis and not by assumption.
