Running on the record

In this valuable study, Lex Renda uses retrospective voting theory - a quantitative political science model for assessing political allegiances - to explore the connections between voters' judgments and public policy in New Hampshire before, during, and after the Civil War. According to this theory, voters base their judgments and party loyalty not on proposals for future policy initiatives but on their assessment of a candidate or party's performance. Renda's research focuses primarily on the correspondence of nineteenth-century New Hampshire politicians, editorials in the state's newspapers, and records of state legislative sessions. He analyzes the politicians' strategies, the appeals they made to voters, the social bases of electoral alignments, and the partisan dimensions of legislative behavior. His book integrates these elements and provides a history of the nexus between what people expected from government during the so-called party period and how they judged its effectiveness in achieving promised results. Renda's approach brings into focus the rationality of nineteenth-century voters, as well as the role of past policy making in influencing election outcomes.