Presidential Popularity in Central America: Parallels with the United States

This article builds on our previous work, which showed that presiden tial popularity in Costa Rica is responsive to economic conditions. Here the analysis covers, in addition to Costa Rica, four sister republics which only recently have undergone democratization. We find that, as in the United States, presidential popularity in Central America rises and falls with the state of the economy Also as in the United States, presidential popularity in Central America is cyclical, higher early and late in the presi dential term. As new and tenuous as democracy is in most of the region, when it comes to rating presidents, Central Americans appear to use the same criteria as voters in the United States.

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