Over time, voters no longer hold former governors accountable for their economic policy successes and failures, paving the way for them to seek office once more.

The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said, “There are no second acts in American lives”, but does this apply to politicians as well? In new research using voting data for ex-governors for the last forty years, George A. Krause finds that, over time, governors’ reputations on the economic performance of their time in office declines, whether it is good or bad. He writes that politicians’ wishing to maximize their odds of having a ‘second electoral act’ should run for office as soon as they leave office if their record of economic performance is a good one, while those with poor prior economic records should take a considerable break when it comes to seeking office again.