The Relationship between Economic Voting and Electoral Campaign in the 2008 American General Election

Traditionally, economic voting is classified into retrospective voting and prospective voting. Retrospective voting is voting based solely on recent economic performance of the current government. Prospective voting is voting based on their expectation about the economic policy of candidates. Nadeau and Lewis-Beck argue that American voters engage in retrospective voting when an incumbent president runs for re-election, and engage in prospective voting when he does not run. In the 2008 American presidential election, however, voters cast their vote to Obama as a punishment to Bush administration even though the President Bush didn't run for re-election. Previous researches also argue that if voters are disappointed with economic condition, the turnout gets low, thus the effect of punishing the current government by voting also decreases. However, in the 2008 American presidential election, the turnout was highest since 1900s and the effect of punishing Bush and his follower McCain was also strong. Why did such a tendency appear against conventional wisdom? I think this is due to the influence of electoral campaign. In the 2008 election, the Democrats actively carried an electoral campaign, attributing global economic crisis on the failure of the President Bush's economic policy. And this motivated people to punish the current government by voting. Thus I'll analyze the relationship between economic voting and electoral campaign that the previous researches have overlooked.