Abstract

ROMERO, Vidal. The Legacy of the President: The Impact of Presidential Approval on Vote. Polít. gob [online]. 2009, vol.16, n.1, pp.3-35. ISSN 1665-2037.

When presidents do not run for reelection in democracies, the electoral connection is not straightforward. It is not obvious in this case how voters' evaluations of leaders get transformed into votes for political parties, nor how political campaigns affect such a relationship. The argument is that voters' evaluations of presidents, which can be measured by presidential approval ratings, work as an information shortcut about the future performance of the candidate; as campaigns generate information about contenders, approval of the retiring president matters relatively less in the voting decision. Based on econometric analysis and four nationwide polls conducted from October 2005 to June 2006, the article tests these hypotheses using the case of the 2006 Mexican presidential election.

Keywords : presidential approval; voting; PAN; PRD; PRI; electoral connection; reelection; Felipe Calderón; Andrés Manuel López Obrador; Vicente Fox.