An Attributional Model of Economic Voting: Evidence from the 2000 Presidential Election

Abstract

In this article we propose and test an attributional model of economic voting. Exploiting an innovative responsibility instrument to analyze the 2000 U.S. presidential election, we find that the incumbent party's can- didate did benefit from the belief that economic conditions had improved, but only among voters who attributed responsibility for that improvement to the president. Moreover, we find that by explicitly mod- eling the effects of responsibility attributions instead of presuming a homogeneous and automatic sanctioning process, the attributional model outperforms the classical reward-punishment model in explaining presidential vote choice. Our results provide new insights into the out- come of the 2000 presidential election and demonstrate the relative importance of issues and the economy.