Cooder recorded and produced the album mostly at Drive-By Studios in North Hollywood, performing all of the instrumentation, including bass, guitar, and mandolin, with the exception of drums, which were played by his son Joachim.

Based in American roots and blues rock music, Election Special features upbeat melodies, simple instrumentation, and sparse arrangements as a backdrop for protest songs that continue the topical storylines of Cooder's previous album Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down (2011).

Displeased with the Republican Party and its financial supporters, Cooder wanted to write an album that would address listeners during the United States presidential election of 2012, which he believed would be a critical event in the country's history.

A deeply political album, Election Special expands on its predecessor's socio-political musings and current event topics with forthright, satirical lyrics and song-form vignettes.

Cooder's songwriting also exhibits liberal and populist sentiments, while drawing on older musical sources such as broadside ballads and country blues.

Released one week before the 2012 Republican National Convention, Election Special was met with generally positive reviews from critics, who applauded its topical protest songs and Cooder's musicianship.

Cooder did not tour in promotion of the album, citing a lost interest in both playing large concert venues and the commercial aspect of releasing records.

In 2011, Cooder recorded Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down after being inspired by a headline about bankers and other affluent people profiting from bank bailouts and the resulting recession during the late-2000s.

[1] Released in August to critical acclaim,[2] it showcased Cooder's return to his early work's musical style and told topical stories about political and social corruption, various economic victims, and an emerging class war.

[4] A month after the album's release, Cooder had his first short-story collection, Los Angeles Stories, published by City Lights Bookstore.

"[8] Cooder recorded most of Election Special at Drive-By Studios, the living room of engineer Martin Pradler's house in North Hollywood.

[1][4][8] Cooder's forthright lyrics exhibit satire,[19] dark humor, and bitter,[21] apprehensive feelings about current events,[15] including Guantanamo Bay, the Occupy movement, the killing of Trayvon Martin,[6] Barack Obama's plight as US President, and the election of 2012.

[10] Cooder's songwriting also reappropriates lyrics from older musical sources, including protest songs, broadside ballads, and country blues.

[9] Nick Coleman of The Independent describes it as "heartfelt and unencumbered with musicological pedantry",[23] while the newspaper's Andy Gill comments that Cooder "employs demotic" language and "variations of the blues ... to carry his broadsides.

[9][21][23][24] Joseph Jon Lanthier of Slant Magazine observes "liberal convictions" and a "bleeding heart" in his lyrics, which he says express "reductive sympathy for President Obama and suspicions that fat cats are perverting the Bill of Rights".

[3] Music essayist Robert Christgau writes that Cooder "reappl[ies] the Popular Front mindset to the messy compromises of electoral politics, and all the must-hears illuminate the 2012 presidential election rather than merely referencing it".

"[4] Allmusic's Thom Jurek cites it as "the most overtly political album of Cooder's career" to due its "soapbox style" and feels that the songs "express what he considers to be, as both an artist and a pissed-off citizen, the high-stakes historical gamble of the 2012 presidential and congressional contest.

[4] Its lyrics attribute the conservative Koch Brothers to the Deal with the Devil myth,[12] which Cooder adapted from Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues".

[16] Literary journalist Alec Wilkinson writes that the song's narrator is "looking for refuge in the part of town where the wind always blows at your back and the ground tilts in your favor.

[19] The song's narrative follows a young American who accepts the Bush administration's pro-war stance, heads off to a foreign land willing to fight any person of color, and returns to his home jobless.

[4] According to writer James C. McKinley, Jr., the song continues a theme Cooder established on Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down: "the idea of poor whites who have been let down by the politicians they have supported.

[38] Released virally on February 17, the video features clips of Romney and a cartoonish depiction of the 1983 incident with his dog, who is in a car rooftop carrier singing the song.

[40] In an interview for The Strand at the time, he expressed disinterest in playing larger concert venues for the album, finding them more suitable for "fame" purposes rather than spreading a political message.

[30] In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called the record a "vigorously partisan gem of gritty picking and black humor ... protest music delivered with a patriot's gifts – the American-roots beauty and expert fire in Ry Cooder's playing – and long memory.

"[15] Desmond Traynor from State hailed Cooder as a "master craftsman" and declared, "social comment once again becomes high art, in the finest American tradition.

"[51] Nick Coleman of The Independent found the album engaging and stated, "You might even argue that this and its predecessors ... represent the most cogent work of [Cooder's] long career.

[19] AllMusic's Thomas Jurek wrote that the album "serves two purposes: one is that it is the most organic record he's issued in almost two decades; and, more importantly, it restores topical protest music to a bona fide place in American cultural life.

"[49] Slant Magazine's Joseph Jon Lanthier found the lyrics "limp" and the album "misfiring, wannabe agitprop", writing that, "though Cooder's clearly singing and playing from his bleeding heart on Election Special, the results make one wish that he'd pass both his mic and his guitar back to his brain.

"[3] Geoff Cowart from musicOMH found its message and music to be "weak" and Cooder to be "overly preachy," commenting that "despite some first-class guitar playing ... the tunes come off second-best to the partisan grudge match.