Are election outcomes driven by events beyond the control of politicians? Democratic accountability requires that voters make reasonable evaluations of incumbents. Although natural disasters are beyond human control, the response to these events is the responsibility of elected officials. In a county-level analysis of gubernatorial and presidential elections from 1970 to 2006, we examine the effects of weather events and governmental responses. We find that electorates punish presidents and governors for severe weather damage. However, we find that these effects are dwarfed by the response of attentive electorates to the actions of their officials. When the president rejects a request by the governor for federal assistance, the president is punished and the governor is rewarded at the polls. The electorate is able to separate random events from governmental responses and attribute actions based on the defined roles of these two politicians.S evere weather events provide unanticipated challenges to incumbent politicians. While weather is well beyond human control, the response of government is determined by politicians. Most voters use only the information at their fingertips to inform their vote choice, and both the severe weather as well as the response of politicians may influence that retrospection. If voters punish politicians for events beyond their control, then elections may result in competent leaders being victims of circumstance. When voters punish or reward their leaders for their actions and efforts, politicians are held accountable for their responses. We examine the extent to which voters are responsive to random weather events and compare that to the electoral attentiveness to the deliberate actions of their elected officials.When politicians preside over good times, they and their party tend to be reelected. When things go wrong, they are more likely to be voted out of office. Voters are retrospective. They look to the past to make a decision that will then influence the future. But what information do voters use to judge the incumbent? Do they distinguish between events beyond the control of a politician (e.g., a natural disaster) and areas where politicians can take action (e.g., the response to a natural disaster)?

Recent studies show that those who perform poorly on sporting activities involving targets recall the target as smaller than do better performers. Some have attributed the effect to action-specific perception, suggesting perception is influenced directly by how one interacts with an object. We proposed that underestimation of target size may instead serve as a justification for poor performance. We found that inaccurate dart throwers, given an excuse that the darts were of poor quality, were less likely to recall the target as smaller. The findings extend research indicating that perception is influenced by motivational factors, and provide further evidence that size estimates can be distorted by memory errors.

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