Key and Fiorina
Analyzing U.S. presidential elections, Key (1966) argued that voters are not fools. Even without knowing every policy in detail, they can judge whether the government has run the country well and shift their support accordingly. Fiorina (1981) systematized this, arguing that voters keep a running tally of evaluations of government performance that makes up their party identification. Judging results rather than policy details is also a shortcut that saves information costs, useful even for voters in a state of rational ignorance.
Electoral control
Ferejohn (1986) modeled elections as a device through which voters control politicians. Voters are principals and politicians agents; if voters set a standard of re-electing incumbents whose performance exceeds a threshold, politicians work to meet it. This applies principal–agent theory to elections. Much retrospective voting research overlaps with economic voting, which concerns evaluations of economic performance, and the theory of the political business cycle, in which governments stimulate the economy before elections, also assumes voters judge by recent performance.
Limits of voter judgment and critiques
Healy and colleagues (2010) showed that incumbent vote shares rise when local college football teams win just before an election, suggesting voters respond to events unrelated to government. Huber and colleagues (2012) found in experiments that voters overweight performance at the end of a term relative to the whole term and fold in luck beyond the government's control. Citing blind retrospection, in which voters punish incumbents even for droughts and floods, Achen and Bartels (2016) questioned the conventional belief that elections ensure accountable government. Healy and Malhotra (2013), however, also reviewed evidence that voters judge somewhat sensibly, for example rewarding effective disaster response.
FAQ
- What is retrospective voting in simple terms?
- Voting based on how well the government has done so far rather than on promises for the future, keeping it if it did well and replacing it if it did not.
- What are the limits of retrospective voting?
- Voters may react too strongly to recent performance or blame the government for things it cannot control, such as weather or sports results.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-26
References
- Key, V. O., Jr. (1966). The Responsible Electorate: Rationality in Presidential Voting, 1936–1960. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. The classic portrait of voters as rational judges of past performance.
- Fiorina, M. P. (1981). Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Models party identification as a running tally of retrospective evaluations.
- Ferejohn, J. (1986). Incumbent performance and electoral control. Public Choice, 50(1–3), 5–25. A principal–agent model of elections as a device of control.
- Healy, A. J., Malhotra, N., & Mo, C. H. (2010). Irrelevant events affect voters' evaluations of government performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(29), 12804–12809. Shows that local sports results affect incumbent support.
- Huber, G. A., Hill, S. J., & Lenz, G. S. (2012). Sources of bias in retrospective decision making: Experimental evidence on voters' limitations in controlling incumbents. American Political Science Review, 106(4), 720–741. Experiments showing voters overweight recent performance.
- Healy, A., & Malhotra, N. (2013). Retrospective voting reconsidered. Annual Review of Political Science, 16, 285–306. A comprehensive review of retrospective voting research.
- Achen, C. H., & Bartels, L. M. (2016). Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Argues for blind retrospection and challenges the folk theory of democracy.