Compare methods

	Economic Voting Analysis	Spatial Voting Model
Field	Political Economy	Political Science
Family	MCDM	MCDM
Year of origin	1971	1957
Originator	Gerald Kramer; Michael Lewis-Beck & Mary Stegmaier	Harold Hotelling, Duncan Black & Anthony Downs
Type	Formal reward-punishment model of voting	Formal model of electoral and legislative choice
Seminal source	Kramer, G. H. (1971). Short-Term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896-1964. American Political Science Review, 65(1), 131-143.	Downs, A. (1957). An Economic Theory of Democracy. Harper & Row. ISBN: 9780060417505
Aliases	Reward-Punishment Model, Retrospective Voting Model, Economic Vote Function, Responsibility Hypothesis	Spatial Theory of Voting, Downsian Model, Proximity Voting Model, Median Voter Model
Related	4	4
Summary	Economic voting analysis is the formal study of how voters reward or punish incumbents according to economic performance. In the reward-punishment (retrospective) model pioneered by Gerald Kramer in 1971, support for the governing party is a function of recent economic outcomes — growth, unemployment, and inflation — so that good times re-elect incumbents and bad times turn them out. Michael Lewis-Beck and Mary Stegmaier's 2000 review consolidated the field, establishing that economic voting is predominantly sociotropic (based on the national economy rather than personal finances) and that its strength depends on the clarity of responsibility: how easily voters can attribute outcomes to the incumbent.	The spatial voting model represents voters and political alternatives as points in a common geometric policy space and assumes that each voter supports the alternative nearest to their own ideal point. Rooted in Hotelling's location theory, Duncan Black's 1948 single-peakedness result, and Anthony Downs's 1957 economic theory of democracy, the model yields two foundational results: the median voter theorem, which identifies the equilibrium policy in one dimension, and the Downsian prediction that two vote-seeking parties converge toward the center. It is the workhorse formalism behind modern empirical estimation of political positions.