@article{2e48c1f7e32741e9af0e5ca0aaa6e5fb,
title = "Looking to the future: Prospective economic voting in 2008 Presidential Elections",
abstract = "Despite the economic turmoil of the time, a typical study of vote choice in the 2008 US Presidential Election would (falsely) find little evidence that voters' opinions about the future state of the economy affected their vote choice. We argue that this misleading conclusion results from serious measurement error in the standard prospective economic evaluations survey question. Relying instead on a revised question, included for the first time in the 2008 American National Election Study, we find that most respondents condition their prospective economic evaluations on potential election outcomes, and that these evaluations are an important determinant of vote choice. A replication in a very different political context - the 2008 Ghanaian election - yields similar results.",
keywords = "2008 American National Elections, 2008 Ghanaian Presidential Election, Prospective economic voting, Survey methodology, Vote choice",
author = "Kristin Michelitch and Marco Morales and Andrew Owen and Tucker, {Joshua A.}",
note = "Funding Information: Previous versions of this paper was presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, the Columbia University Applied Statistics Seminar, the NYU Department of Politics In-House Seminar and the Juan March Foundation in Madrid, Spain; we are very grateful for the many comments and suggestions we received during these presentations, and especially Nathaniel Beck, Jonathan Nagler and Helmut Norpoth. Thank you to the American National Election Study for accepting our proposal for survey questions. Jalilu Ateku, Kofi Bonsu, Eyram Vida Degbor, Patrick Mahama, Paul Mensah, Isaac Oteng, Yvette Otoo, and Faiza Sani provided irreplaceable enumeration of the Ghana survey, financed by the New York University Global Fellowship, the Robert Holmes Fellowship, the APSA{\textquoteright}s Centennial Center, and the APSA Africa Workshop. Three anonymous reviewers and the editors at Electoral Studies provided useful critiques. ",
year = "2012",
month = dec,
doi = "10.1016/j.electstud.2012.04.002",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "31",
pages = "838--851",
journal = "Electoral Studies",
issn = "0261-3794",
publisher = "Elsevier BV",
number = "4",
}