Description

Retrospective voting is the notion in political science that voters make their decisions in a given election by reflecting on the performance of the party in power over the past four years, particularly as that performance pertains to the economy. If the economy is performing well, retrospective voting theory dictates that voters will choose to vote in favor of the party in power; if economic performance is poor, they will vote for a change. This is contrasted with prospective voting (where voters make choices based on their predictions of how candidates will perform in the upcoming four years), party-line voting (where voters consistently choose candidates from their same party) and rational choice voting (where voters base voting decisions on whether their vote is likely to be influential in the outcome).