Motivated Reasoning, Public Opinion, and Presidential Approval
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Motivated Reasoning, Public Opinion, and Presidential Approval Kathleen Donovan1 · Paul M. Kellstedt2 · Ellen M. Key3 · Matthew J. Lebo4
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Presidential approval is a desirable commodity for US presidents, one that bolsters re-election chances and the prospects of legislative success. An important question, then, is what shapes citizens’ approval of the executive. A large body of literature demonstrates that the president’s handling of issues, particularly the economy, is an important component. A similarly large literature confirms that evaluations of the president, like most political objects, are filtered through partisan lenses. Due to changes in the US political environment in the last few decades, we suspect that the relative importance of these components has changed over time. In particular, we argue that polarization has increased partisan motivated reasoning when it comes to evaluations of the president. We support this empirically by disaggregating approval ratings from Reagan to Obama into in- and out-partisans, finding that approval is increasingly detached from economic assessments. This is true for members opposite the president’s party earlier than it is for in-partisans. While the president has been over-attributed credit and blame for economic conditions, the increasing impact of partisanship on approval at the expense of economic sentiment has generally negative implications when it comes to electoral outcomes and democratic accountability. Keywords Public opinion · Presidential approval · Motivated reasoning · Polarization “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” – Donald Trump, 2016
* Ellen M. Key [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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Political Behavior
What Drives Presidential Approval? Many Americans may not be particularly interested in or pay detailed attention to politics, but almost all can and do form an opinion about the president. In turn, presidents want these opinions to be favorable. Surely, their desire for high approval ratings is, to some degree, an end in itself, but more importantly it is a means to other ends: for one, re-election is usually a motivation for first-term presidents, and approval strongly predicts votes come Election Day (Campbell, 2016). Moreover, congressional candidates of the president’s party can ride his coattails when approval is high, increasing the chances of united government and legislative success. Even after the election, high approval ratings can justify a “mandate” and provide political capital for passing policies (Bond et al. 2003). Approval, in other words, is a desirable commodity, and one that presidents actively seek (Brody 1991). A natural question that arises, then, is what drives presidential approval? A large literature reveals that the answer is the president’s job performance, particularly with respect to foreign conflicts (Eichen
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