For this reason, daily public approval polls sometimes act as both a referendum of the president and a predictor of success. The relationship between public opinion polls and government action is murkier than that between polls and elections. Like the news media and campaign staffers, members of the three branches of government are aware of public opinion.
But do politicians use public opinion polls to guide their decisions and actions? Yet many political studies, from the American Voter in the s to the American Voter Revisited in the s, have found that voters behave rationally despite having limited information. Individual citizens do not take the time to become fully informed about all aspects of politics, yet their collective behavior and the opinions they hold as a group make sense.
They appear to be informed just enough, using preferences like their political ideology and party membership, to make decisions and hold politicians accountable during an election year. Overall, the collective public opinion of a country changes over time, even if party membership or ideology does not change dramatically. While the initial study on public mood revealed that the economy has a profound effect on American opinion, [15].
Individually, of course, politicians cannot predict what will happen in the future or who will oppose them in the next few elections. They can look to see where the public is in agreement as a body. If public mood changes, the politicians may change positions to match the public mood. The more savvy politicians look carefully to recognize when shifts occur. When the public is more or less liberal, the politicians may make slight adjustments to their behavior to match. Politicians who frequently seek to win office, like House members, will pay attention to the long- and short-term changes in opinion.
By doing this, they will be less likely to lose on Election Day. Public opinion of the president is different from public opinion of Congress. Congress is an institution of members, and opinion polls look at both the institution and its individual members.
The president is both a person and the head of an institution. As early as Franklin D. Presidential responsiveness to public opinion has been measured in a number of ways, each of which tells us something about the effect of opinion. One study examined whether presidents responded to public opinion by determining how often they wrote amicus briefs and asked the court to affirm or reverse cases.
Bush , are elected and try to lead. While the public supported liberal approaches to policy, presidential action varied from liberal to non-liberal. If presidents have enough public support, they use their level of public approval indirectly as a way to get their agenda passed. Immediately following Inauguration Day, for example, the president enjoys the highest level of public support for implementing campaign promises. This is especially true if the president has a mandate , which is more than half the popular vote.
When presidents have high levels of public approval, they are likely to act quickly and try to accomplish personal policy goals. They can use their position and power to focus media attention on an issue. This is sometimes referred to as the bully pulpit approach. Roosevelt used his position to convince voters to pressure Congress to pass laws.
For this reason, modern presidents may find more success in using their popularity to increase media and social media attention on an issue. Even if the president is not the reason for congressional action, he or she can cause the attention that leads to change. Presidents may also use their popularity to ask the people to act. After offering his condolences and prayers to the community, he remarked that prayers and condolences were no longer enough, and he called on citizens to push Congress for a change in gun control laws.
President Obama had proposed gun control reform following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, but it did not pass Congress. This time, the president asked citizens to use gun control as a voting issue and push for reform via the ballot box. In some instances, presidents may appear to directly consider public opinion before acting or making decisions. Despite agreeing that this chemical attack on the Damascan suburbs was a war crime, the public was against U.
Forty-eight percent of respondents said they opposed airstrikes, and only 29 percent were in favor. Democrats were especially opposed to military intervention. However, further examples show that presidents do not consistently listen to public opinion.
After taking office in , President Obama did not order the closing of Guantanamo Bay prison, even though his proposal to do so had garnered support during the election. President Bush , despite growing public disapproval for the war in Iraq, did not end military support in Iraq after And President Bill Clinton , whose White House pollsters were infamous for polling on everything, sometimes ignored the public if circumstances warranted.
In , despite public opposition, Clinton guaranteed loans for the Mexican government to help the country out of financial insolvency. Individual examples like these make it difficult to persuasively identify the direct effects of public opinion on the presidency. While presidents have at most only two terms to serve and work, members of Congress can serve as long as the public returns them to office.
We might think that for this reason public opinion is important to representatives and senators, and that their behavior, such as their votes on domestic programs or funding, will change to match the expectation of the public. In a more liberal time, the public may expect to see more social programs. In a non-liberal time, the public mood may favor austerity, or decreased government spending on programs.
House of Representatives members, with a two-year term, have a more difficult time recovering from decisions that anger local voters. And because most representatives continually fundraise, unpopular decisions can hurt their campaign donations. For these reasons, it seems representatives should be susceptible to polling pressure.
Yet one study, by James Stimson, found that the public mood does not directly affect elections, and shifts in public opinion do not predict whether a House member will win or lose.
These elections are affected by the president on the ticket, presidential popularity or lack thereof during a midterm election, and the perks of incumbency, such as name recognition and media coverage. In fact, a later study confirmed that the incumbency effect is highly predictive of a win, and public opinion is not. In spite of this, we still see policy shifts in Congress, often matching the policy preferences of the public.
When the shifts happen within the House, they are measured by the way members vote. The Senate is quite different from the House. Senators do not enjoy the same benefits of incumbency, and they win reelection at lower rates than House members. Yet, they do have one advantage over their colleagues in the House: Senators hold six-year terms, which gives them time to engage in fence-mending to repair the damage from unpopular decisions.
Specifically, the study shows that when public opinion shifts, fewer senators win reelection. Thus, when the public as a whole becomes more or less liberal, new senators are elected. Rather than the senators shifting their policy preferences and voting differently, it is the new senators who change the policy direction of the Senate.
Beyond voter polls, congressional representatives are also very interested in polls that reveal the wishes of interest groups and businesses. If AARP , one of the largest and most active groups of voters in the United States, is unhappy with a bill, members of the relevant congressional committees will take that response into consideration. There is some disagreement about whether the Supreme Court follows public opinion or shapes it.
The lifetime tenure the justices enjoy was designed to remove everyday politics from their decisions, protect them from swings in political partisanship, and allow them to choose whether and when to listen to public opinion.
When the justices accept controversial cases, the media tune in and ask questions, raising public awareness and affecting opinion. But do the justices pay attention to the polls when they make decisions? Studies that look at the connection between the Supreme Court and public opinion are contradictory. Early on, it was believed that justices were like other citizens: individuals with attitudes and beliefs who would be affected by political shifts.
Later studies argued that Supreme Court justices rule in ways that maintain support for the institution. Instead of looking at the short term and making decisions day to day, justices are strategic in their planning and make decisions for the long term. Other studies have revealed a more complex relationship between public opinion and judicial decisions, largely due to the difficulty of measuring where the effect can be seen. Some studies look at the number of reversals taken by the Supreme Court, which are decisions with which the Court overturns the decision of a lower court.
In one study, the authors found that public opinion slightly affects cases accepted by the justices. Who Governs? Buy this book : Who Governs? Request an exam Copy for Who Governs? Find this book in a library : Who Governs? Rights and Permissions for Who Governs?
This is a myth, however, not a reality, according to James N. In Who Governs? Presidents treat the public as pliable, priming it to focus on personality traits and often ignoring it on policies that fail to become salient. Melding big debates about democratic theory with existing research on American politics and innovative use of the archives of three modern presidents—Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan—Druckman and Jacobs deploy lively and insightful analysis to show that the conventional model of representative democracy bears little resemblance to the actual practice of American politics.
The authors conclude by arguing that polyarchy and the promotion of accelerated citizen mobilization and elite competition can improve democratic responsiveness. An incisive study of American politics and the flaws of representative government, this book will be warmly welcomed by readers interested in US politics, public opinion, democratic theory, and the fecklessness of American leadership and decision-making.
The picture is not pretty: presidents of both political parties seek to manipulate, distract, and often mislead the public in their pursuit of narrow interests that do not benefit the majority of citizens. From Tea Leaves to Opinion Polls. New York: Columbia University Press, A significant book that documents the importance of issue salience to the likelihood of leadership or followership concerning public opinion polls.
The implication for presidential persuasion is that presidents are most likely to lead on issues that are not relevant to the American people. Neuman, W. Essential to appreciating the limits of presidential persuasion of public opinion is a foundational understanding that few among the public pay attention to politics, which this book provides. Page, Benjamin, and Robert Shapiro.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Pika, Joseph A. The Politics of the Presidency. Zaller, John. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. The balance of elite discourse drives public opinion. Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login. Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
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