In this book, we have demonstrated that some of the ways in which economic voting is traditionally investigated are inappropriate and bound to yield biased results, inconsistencies, instabilities, and anomalies. More specifically, we demonstrated that among the major sources of error are:

1. The use of subjective indicators of economic conditions, which are fraught with endogeneity problems and which customarily yield unrealistically high estimates of what are purported to be the effects of economic conditions. More importantly, as argued in Chapter 1, if we are interested in the extent to which voters hold governments accountable for economic conditions, then it is the real economy that is at issue, not a subjective reality that may help to determine vote choice but whose link to normative concerns, such as government accountability, is questionable.

2. The use of a dichotomy between government and opposition parties when (as is most often the case) there are more than two parties in a political system. This dichotomy is of little relevance for voters' reactions to economic conditions in so-called low-clarity countries. Moreover, it incorrectly forces the analyst to estimate a single effect for all government parties and assume an equal but opposite effect for all opposition parties. A final source of error arises from the following.

3. […]