Failure analysis and prediction of fatigue life of elastomers are important issues due to wide usage of elastomeric components in many applications. Material deformation and fatigue characterization including both crack nucleation and crack growth are typically required for such analysis and predictions. This article discusses relevant material deformation properties obtained from experiments conducted under stress states of simple tension and planar tension. Cyclic transient behavior including Mullin's effect is also discussed. Then, fatigue crack initiation approach and experimental procedure and obtained data are discussed including modeling of the R ratio effect. Finally, based on the fracture mechanics approach, fatigue crack growth test procedure and properties are presented, including a model for R-ratio effect. It is also shown that using the crack growth approach as a total fatigue life predictor gives reasonable results, as compared with the crack nucleation approach. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 2012. (C) 2012 Society of Plastics Engineers