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of a campaign. While electoral expectations have been somewhat ignored, with some
exceptions, expectations of other types, especially in economics, have seen greater study.
In this paper, I apply a theory of rational expectations to expectations in the
presidential nomination campaigns of the 2000 election. Using the National Annenberg
Election Survey from that year, I use time-series analyses to show support for this theory.
I do so by first proposing a theory of rational electoral expectations. I then look at the
data used to measure expectations, media coverage, and candidate spending and view
how they changed over the course of the 2000 campaign. I then carry out tests of the
rational electoral expectations theory by combining expectations, media coverage, and
candidate spending into multivariate time series models. I conclude with a discussion of
the results from these models and what this means for our understanding of electoral
expectations and the study of voting behavior.
Rational Expectations
Individual expectations about the future performance of the economy have been a
source of great interest among economists for quite some time. How the economy is
expected to perform has an impact on a variety of topics, such as consumer confidence,
which then translates into real consumer behavior. As a result, economists have sought to
explain how and why expectations form and how and why they change over time.
One theory that economists have used to explain expectations is the theory of
rational expectations (Muth 1961). The theory of rational expectations argues that people
use all available information to form their expectations of some phenomena. More
directly, the theory states that expectations of Y are influenced by the past performance
Convention