Harvard University Press, 1966), in which V. O. Key Jr.— whom Bartels regards as the greatest political scientist of his era—paints the electorate as ultimately moved by the relevant issues of the day. In his much-quoted summary, Key states, “In the large, the electorate behaves about as rationally and responsibly as we should expect, given the clarity and the alternatives presented to it and the character of the information available to it.” Bartels offered a point-bypoint analysis of the major arguments in Key’s book, saying that in his opinion, the subsequent political science literature has not upheld Illustration by Kotryna Zukauskaite
Key’s optimistic portrait of the electorate and the electoral process. Bartels suggested that many Americans are lowinformation voters who make decisions on the basis of first impressions, choosing their candidate and then adjusting their policy views according to what that candidate believes. So what do American voters vote on? As it turns out, Key’s emphasis on governmental performance and executive personality has largely been supported by many additional studies. “Elections can be viewed as referenda on presidential performance and some
version of economic performance or income growth,” said Bartels. There’s a catch, however, which is that voters are myopically focused on current conditions. “The best predictor of a president’s reelection chances is the level of income growth in the 14th and 15th quarters of his term, which is the middle of the election year,” said Bartels, and what happens during that six-month period is more likely to drive voters’ opinions than the incumbent’s overall performance. According to Bartels, voters seek alternatives to the incumbent party in times of economic hardship, whether
that hardship is the product of the markets or of the natural world. “The incumbent party is punished at the polls when weather is too wet or too dry—or even when shark attacks go up,” he said. “Election outcomes have very significant and systematic policy consequences,” Bartels said. “But I’m forced to conclude that those election outcomes themselves are largely random, shaped much more by short-term income growth and other idiosyncratic factors than by what Key referred to as ‘relative questions of public policy, of governmental performance, and of executive personality.’”
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