Factores de ponderación del voto retrospectivo

The central theoretical principie of the retrospective voting theory, that postulates that individuals base their electoral decisions on the evaluation they do of the performance of the incumbent party, seems to be confirmed among the electorate that participated in the 1997 Mexican federal elections. Nevertheless, this behavior was rather different among social strata. The differences observed in the behav-ior of the various strata are better explained if the model incorporates factors that weight the utility functions of the individuals. This note explores some of the weighting factors affecting the retrospective evaluation of the performance of the incumbent party, and explains the differences observed in the value of these factors among the various social strata, particularly, the peasants.