The question of whether voters always punish political leaders who raise taxes is the subject of Niemi, Stanley, and Vogel's article "State Economies and State Taxes: Do Voters Hold Governors Accountable?" The short answer is yes: The purpose of the article is to show that voters' perceptions of their own well being are shaped more locally (i.e., at the state level) than nationally and that a perception of economic weakness and financial insecurity, aggravated by an increase in taxes, tends to lead to rejection of the incumbent governor under whose watch the individual tax burden was enacted.
The method that the authors use to demonstrate the link between tax hikes and loss of gubernatorial incumbency is to cross-reference published state tax data with exit polls. Such data are measured against state election results, which are of course an index of voter behavior. The decision to focus on data from 36 state races in the middle of the Reagan presidency (1986) rather than to attempt to analyze federal election results appears to be due to controversy over whether the status of the economy has predictive power for federal election results (NSV 937). The authors cite research showing that the status of the national economy "most influences state-level voting" (NSV 937). They also note that previous election-analysis research has focused on the personalities of candidates and the issue fronts on which they run their campaign; certainly media coverage of state and national elections alike seem to deal with ideology. As well, the status of the national economy has long been considered decisive in shaping voter perceptions and behavior at the state level.
It is, however, at the local (= state) level that individuals have a much more direct and more intensely felt relationship with their government, even though in purely objective terms the vicissitudes of a state economy may not be directly under the control of public officials, includi...