Voters punish incumbents in bad times as risk seekers, not as rational appraisal

Evidence

It is important to distinguish this analysis of incumbency-oriented voting from the more common explanation that “when times are bad you throw the rascals out.” In the latter account, voters are thought to regard a credible challenger as having to be better than the incumbent, who “got us into this mess to begin with.” The present account, in contrast, is based on the notion that the challenger is riskier than the incumbent, not necessarily better overall. In problems 2 and 4, the risky candidates profit from hard times even though their expected value was no better than that of the relatively riskless candidates. Obviously, however, a challenger whose expected value is substantially below the incumbent’s is unlikely to be elected even in the presence of substantial risk seeking. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2441

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to prospect theory/behavioral economics literature (Kahneman & Tversky) and to retrospective voting models in political science (Fiorina, Key) — connects to: Risky challengers win bad-time votes despite equal expected value. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 2441