A quick blog request as I listen to Larry Bartels give a summary talk on economic voting and the recent recession*: does anyone know of any studies on economic voting / retrospective voting in the 19th century? Bartels mentioned that a few papers attempted to test the idea that voters focus primarily on recent economic performance back into the 19th century, but didn’t give any names, and I’m having trouble tracking them down via Google Scholar.

Thanks!

* The answer is: economic voting models do really well, the 2008 and 2012 elections were very close to the historical trend line and not unusual in any way, and the same findings hold more or less across Europe.