Do expected downturns kill political budget cycles?

The political budget cycle (PBC) literature argues that governments expand deficits in election years. However, what happens when an economic downturn isexpected? Will the government allow the deficit to expand even further, or will it resort to spending cuts and tax increases? When votersexpectless than full automatic stabilization, our model shows that opportunistic government behavior leads to smaller deficits, thereby responding procyclically toexpecteddownturns. Panel data evidence for 74 democracies covering the period 2000-2016 robustly supports the theoretical procyclicality prediction. Moreover, expected downturns remain significant when other context-conditional PBC effects are included in the empirical analysis.