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This essay reports on some experiments designed to study two candidate electoral competition when voters are 'retrospective' voters. The experiments consist of a sequence of elections in which subjects play the part of both voters and candidates. In each election the incumbent adopts a policy position in a one-dimensional policy space, and voters are paid (on the basis of single peaked utility function over that space) for the position adopted by the incumbent. Neither voters nor candidates are informed of the voter utility functions, and the only information received by the voter is the payoff he has received from the present and previous incumbent administrations. Despite the severely limited information of candidates and voters, we find that, generally, candidates converge toward the median voter ideal point.

This essay reports on a series of twenty-four election experiments in which voters are allowed to decide between voting retrospectively and purchasing contemporaneous information about the candidate challenging the incumbent. Each experiment consists of a series of election periods in which dummy candidates choose spatial positions which represent either their policy while in office or a promise about policy if elected. Subjects (voters) are told the value to them of the incumbent's policy, but they must decide, prior to voting, whether or not to purchase information about the value of the challenger's promise. In general, our data conform to reasonable expectations: voters purchase less information and rely more on retrospective knowledge when the candidates' strategies are stable, and their likelihood of purchasing information during periods of instability is tempered by the likelihood that their votes matter, by the reliability of the information available for purchase, and by the degree of instability as measured by changes in each voter's welfare.

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