When evaluating a president’s economic performance, voters look across their entire record – not just the recent short term.

How do voters decide? Do they take everything into account that happened over the government’s time in office? Or do they rely only on the recent past? Timothy Hellwig and Dani M. Marinova report that voters, counter to conventional understandings, are not so short-sighted. Their analysis of vote intentions in the run up to the 2012 presidential election reveals that voters are no more accurate in assessing economic performance over the short term compared to the long term. Voters, it turns out, are more misinformed than short-sighted.