What's the Half-Life of the Economic Vote? (About a Year and a Half)

Economic voting research assumes that voters focus their attention on the recent past. Yet testing this assumption is difficult and previous research remains inconclusive. To estimate voters’ economic time frames, I specify a new model that relies on insights from the physical sciences. I show that voter myopia is real and that the economic vote is strongest when economic time frames are shortest. After around a year and a half, its effect falls by half. After seven years, it becomes practically equivalent to zero. This suggests that voters are less short-sighted than some past research suggests. Yet, there is still some cause for concern: voters’ economic time frames remain short enough that governments may receive undeserved leeway for mistakes they make early in their tenure.