In this paper we investigate whether or not recent initiatives taken by governments
and international organizations to come up with indicators of Subjective Well
Being (SWB) to inform policy makers go in the same direction as citizens expectations
on what policy makers should do. We test retrospective voting hypotheses
by using standard measures of SWB as a proxy for utility instead of the commonly
used indicators of economic and financial circumstances. Using the British Household
Panel Survey Data we find that citizens who are satisfied with their life are
more likely to cast their vote in favour of the ruling party, even taking into account
ideological preferences. We show that SWB influences voting decision even when
the event affecting the SWB is beyond the government’s control, like the spouse
death
