Achen and Bartels contend that retrospective voting is frequently “blind.” Voters will typically penalize an incumbent for hardships experienced by the voters even if a hardship was something the government could not prevent or control. Beginning with a history of how rulers have been blamed for natural disasters, they then analyze contemporary electoral behavior to determine if citizens electorally respond to natural disasters differently. Such responses illustrate the fundamental mechanics of retrospective voting: When people experience difficulties, they often “punish” the government, regardless of whether there is a valid objective reason for doing so.

Achen and Bartels examine the shark attack epidemic during the summer of 1916 along the shores of New Jersey. Even though no government could have prevented or effectively controlled the attacks, Woodrow Wilson lost considerable support among beach communities economically and emotionally impacted by the panic. They treat this as an unambiguous example of “blameless” electoral punishment not based on rational assessments of governmental responsibility. Next, Achen and Bartels examine electoral response to natural disasters over a period of nearly a century of presidential elections, demonstrating that incumbent presidents consistently lose vote share in states experiencing either extreme wet or extreme dry conditions. These results suggest that voters consistently penalize presidents for unfortunate climatic occurrences even though presidents can exert no meaningful control over weather events.

Achen and Bartels evaluate at least three explanations for voter actions toward natural disasters, including the idea that voters are punishing governments for inadequate disaster relief efforts rather than the occurrence of the disasters per se. Achen and Bartels dismiss this explanation due to the fact that punitive action appears to be too unilateral and consistently applied to be explained by reasoned evaluations of governmental performance. Rather, Achen and Bartels contend that voters engage in retrospective punishments heavily influenced by culturally available accounts of who is to blame for their suffering. This explains why certain natural disasters elicit political backlash while other natural disasters do not. 

For example, the 1918 influenza pandemic resulted in a substantial loss of life and involved real failings by government agencies. Despite these factors, it elicited little if any electoral retaliation against elected officials since no commonly accepted account was provided linking public officials to the harm resulting from the flu pandemic. The chapter ends by stating that “blind retrospection” represents a major challenge to democratic accountability. When voters cannot differentiate harms occasioned by policy versus harms occasioned by chance, electoral penalties become misguided and provide weak motivation for good governance.

Achen and Bartels address what they consider the most common form of retrospective evaluation: Economic voting. They contend that while many scholars have accepted economic voting as one of the best ways to evaluate the performance of an incumbent’s economic policies, it is very limited and arbitrary. Achen and Bartels also state that scholars generally accept the premise that electors will vote for incumbents if they perceive positive economic trends during their time in office, and will vote against them if they perceive negative economic trends.

However, Achen and Bartels question this assumption. First, they consider whether electors have the ability to properly evaluate the performance of an incumbent based solely on voters’ perceptions of their own financial situations. Second, they question whether electors’ time horizons are sufficient to allow them to make informed decisions about the incumbent’s past performance.

Achen and Bartels focus on presidential elections, using quarterly data on real disposable personal income per capita to determine how much of an incumbent’s performance voters consider. The results of their study indicate that voters react almost exclusively to income increases during the last six months prior to an election. Income increases early in an incumbent’s term were found to matter little or nothing. The reason for such a short-term focus by voters, which Achen and Bartels refer to as the “specious present,” is because voters tend to pay little attention to nearly all of the economic factors for which an administration may be accountable. Therefore, the outcome of an election may depend upon short-term fluctuations in the economy rather than the incumbent’s total management of the economy.

Finally, Achen and Bartels evaluate whether this type of economic voting can serve as a viable mechanism for selecting competent administrators or providing incentives for good policy. They argue that voters cannot rely upon short-term changes in income as a reliable indicator of an administration’s level of competence. In fact, Achen and Bartels found no substantial difference in economic performance between re-elected administrations and those administrations that lost their bid for re-election. Moreover, short-term focused voters provide no incentive for elected officials to manage the economy in a manner that serves the long-run interests of society; rather, voters encourage elected officials to manipulate economic indicators just prior to elections, creating “electoral business cycles” (171) whereby elected officials emphasize short-term gains over long-term social welfare. 

Ultimately, Achen and Bartels conclude that economic voting is a real force in politics and is capable of influencing political outcomes. However, they assert that economic voting is poor grounds for confidence in democratic accountability.

Achen and Bartels challenge conventional interpretations of the New Deal realignments as popular endorsements of Roosevelt’s policies. The standard story states that in 1932, voters rejected Hoover’s conservatism, endorsed Roosevelt’s reform agenda in 1936, and established a durable Democratic majority built upon shared policy preferences. Instead, Achen and Bartels argue that during the Great Depression, voters acted similarly to contemporary voters, i.e., they responded primarily to current economic conditions rather than ideology or broad policy preferences.

The authors begin with Roosevelt’s elections. They argue that in 1932, voters were motivated primarily by a desire for change in response to an extreme deterioration in economic conditions; they did not yet possess a discernible programmatic agenda for reform. They believe that while voters in 1936 may have viewed Roosevelt’s landslide victory as approval of the New Deal program, their data suggests that support for Roosevelt was strongly conditioned by income growth in 1936 rather than by cumulative recovery throughout his entire tenure. Income growth in earlier years of Roosevelt’s first administration had little apparent electoral significance. According to Achen and Bartels, demographic groups commonly identified with Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition—e.g., farmers, immigrants, Black voters, and the poor—also do not reveal evidence of a distinctive ideological shift at the state level. Thus, they argue that Roosevelt’s success rested heavily on favorable election-year conditions.

This thesis is extended to Congressional elections between 1934 and 1940. Once again, Achen and Bartels suggest that the data demonstrate that income changes occurring in each election year appear to be far more important determinants of voter choice than either prior increases or decreases in income. Therefore, similar to presidential elections, Congressional elections seem to have been based on short-term retrospective evaluation rather than a more longitudinal assessment of incumbent performance. However, Achen and Bartels argue that these short-term evaluations tended to accumulate into long-standing partisan identities that ultimately contributed to the long period of Democratic Party dominance following the Great Depression.

Lastly, Achen and Bartels compare their findings regarding the US case with other democracies experiencing the Great Depression. While incumbent governments were generally defeated in elections across various countries (Canada, Australia, UK, Sweden, France, Germany), successor regimes varied widely depending on specific domestic circumstances. Voter defections from incumbent governments occurred across diverse ideologies (leftist-nationalist-conservative), depending on local factors affecting voter satisfaction.