The literature on retrospective economic voting in Central and Eastern Europe highlights the large electoral losses of incumbent parties. Very few governments from the region managed to gain electoral support after sitting in the government. Roberts (2008) coined this situation as hyper-accountability. Aggregate-level studies interpret this process as a reward-punishment exercise during which voters punish the government parties by voting for the opposition parties. At the individual level, however, the dissatisfaction with a governmental party can take the form of either switching to opposition parties or abstention. The literature on retrospective voting and electoral volatility in CEE countries omits the important group of voters who switch between participation and abstention. To overcome above-mentioned omission, we present the model of defection from government parties. It starts with the Hirschman’s distinction between exit, voice and loyalty as three possible reactions to dissatisfaction with provided goods. Using aggregate and individual-level data for 11 CEE countries since 2001, this paper examines conditions under which voters of former governing parties prefer to vote for opposition parties (voice) or abstain (exit). Several institutional and party-level explanations are presented. The results suggest that large government parties lose more often because of selective abstention. In addition to that, individual-level correlates of both strategies are analysed. As expected by our model, political sophistication and interest in politics lead to vote for opposition parties.