Political Research Quarterly

Volume 60 Number 2
June 2007 250-262
The Policy Opportunities in © 2007 University of Utah
10.1177/1065912907301775

Presidential Honeymoons http://prq.sagepub.com

hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

Matthew N. Beckmann
University of California, Irvine
Joseph Godfrey
WinSet Group, LLC, Fairfax, Virginia

This article investigates the policy opportunities in presidential honeymoons. Specifically, after reviewing a standard
(pivotal politics) model of lawmaking where presidents’ election results are treated as exogenous, we develop a (hon-
eymoon politics) model in which a president’s election results are treated as endogenous—that is, where legislators’
positions factor in the president’s electoral results among their constituents. Applying both models to every newly
elected president and corresponding Senate since 1932, comparative statics show that presidents’ policy-making
prospects always improve in “honeymoon” settings, though this effect varies depending on lawmakers’ preference dis-
tribution, presidents’ electoral coalition, and the threshold required to invoke cloture.

Keywords: president; Congress; honeymoons; mandate

P residential elections comprise unique and impor-

tant moments in American politics; they indicate
the citizenry’s choice for the nation’s highest office at
the moment when they are most attentive to politics.
Thus, beyond their explicit role of selecting the nation’s
policy makers, many political commentators—presidents
and congressional members among them—maintain
that presidential elections serve a second vital func-
tion: signifying what “the people” expect from their
representatives as they head to Washington.
To be sure, a rich literature has interrogated the
logic connecting presidential elections and any policy
directives they might proffer. The overriding conclu-
sion is that if so-called electoral mandates ever exist,
they are vague and conditional at best. Among the pes-
simists, Raymond Wolfinger (1985, 293) has argued
that because a binary vote is such a blunt instrument,
“mandates are inherently implausible.” A similar logic
led Robert Dahl (1990) to dismiss claims of presiden-
tial mandates as little more than “myth.” Others, how-
ever, have argued that less stringent versions of
electoral mandates may be justified. Agreeing that vot-
ers are unable to communicate any detailed message
via their votes, Campbell et al. (1960) concluded that
elections can nonetheless be viewed as signaling vot-
ers’ directional preference vis-à-vis the status quo (see
also Fiorina 1981; Rabinowitz and Macdonald 1989).
And more recently, Patricia Heidotting Conley (2001)
argued that presidents can (and do) plausibly claim
mandates when they satisfy the essential criteria: they
run issue-based campaigns and win decisively.
Yet if the theoretical legitimacy of presidents’ post-
election mandates remains open for debate, far less
controversial is the empirical reality of presidents’
postelection honeymoons.1 In addition to enjoying an
accommodating press corps (Grossman and Kumar
1981; Hughes 1995) and high standing in opinion
polls (Brace and Hinckley 1992; Brody 1991), presi-
dents in their inaugural year also enjoy uncommon
success on Capitol Hill. At the micro-level, first-year
presidents find that lawmakers vote in accord with
their preferred position more often than they will in
Authors’ Note: This article was originally prepared for the
Comparative Analysis of Roll-Call Voting conference, sponsored
by the Institute for Governmental Studies at the University of
California, Berkeley, and the Department of Political Science at
the University of California, San Diego. We first thank Bernie
Grofman for introducing the authors, and further thank Bernie
Grofman, Reuben Kline, and three anonymous reviewers for
thoughtfully commenting on the article. Additionally, we thank
participants at the University of North Carolina, American
Politics Research Group, for helpful advice at an early stage of
this project. Our final thanks go to UC Irvine’s Center for the
Study of Democracy for generously supporting our collaboration,
and also Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal for making their
DW-NOMINATE data publicly available.

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 Beckmann, Godfrey / The Policy Opportunities in Presidential Honeymoons 251
subsequent years (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Edwards
1989; Grossback, Peterson, and Stimson 2005;
Lockerbie, Borrelli, and Hedger 1998; Peterson et al.
2003); at the macro-level, not only is the postelection
period especially productive in terms of policy enact-
ments (Frendreis, Tatalovich, and Schaff 2001), but also
those enactments disproportionately include new laws
the president supports (Bunce 1980; Conley 2001;
Edwards and Barrett 2000; Light 1999; McCarty 1997;
Peterson 1990).2 Hence Mark Peterson’s plainly stated
synopsis characterizes the findings nicely: “Early leg-
islative involvement by modern presidents has gener-
ally been rewarded” (1990, 121).
The question that remains, though, is whether the
postelection patterns we observe reflect anything like a
bona fide “honeymoon effect.” That is, does the find-
ing that presidents often enjoy uncommon success in
the wake of their election indicate a causal link, or is it
just the spurious symptom resulting from the new
assemblage of officials in Washington? While the vast
majority of scholarship presumes presidential honey-
moons’ causal significance, more recent work gives
reason for skepticism. Indeed, it explains why presi-
dents may witness unusual policy success in their early
months without any help from presidential honey-
moons per se (Brady and Volden 1998; Krehbiel
1998). As Keith Krehbiel (1998, 42) explained,
An administration may indeed be characterized
by a flurry of initial and ostensibly successful leg-
islative activity . . . [which] inevitably drops off
soon. While the drop-off makes the prior activity
appear as if it were a honeymoon, the successful
passage of legislation in this model is not gener-
ated by those forces. . . . Rather, it is a more
straightforward consequence of old policies being
out of equilibrium given new preferences.
This article investigates the policy opportunities in
presidential honeymoons. Specifically, after review-
ing a standard (pivotal politics) model of lawmaking
where the president’s election results are treated as
exogenous, we develop a new (honeymoon politics)
model in which a president’s election results are
treated as endogenous—that is, where legislators’
preferences over policies factor in the president’s
electoral results among their constituents. We first
examine the models and their implications, and then
we apply both to every newly elected president and
corresponding Senate since 1932. Comparative stat-
ics demonstrate that presidents’ policy-making
prospects always improve in “honeymoon” settings,
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though the size of this effect varies depending on the
nature of the president’s electoral coalition, the com-
position of the Congress he faces, and the threshold
required to invoke cloture. In sum, we propose a spe-
cific casual mechanism underlying a genuine “hon-
eymoon effect,” model its impact on U.S. lawmaking,
and demonstrate the predicted policy implications for
every newly elected president since FDR.
Presidential Elections as Selection
(Honeymoons as Epiphenomenal)
Far from the days when political scientists asserted
that a president’s potential for passing his legislative
agenda depended almost exclusively on his personal
character and political skill (Barber 1972; Burns
1965; Rossiter 1956), today’s prevailing wisdom is
that presidents are highly constrained by the context
they happen to inherit (Jones 1994; Skowronek
1997).3 In particular, evidence shows that presidents’
legislative fortunes depend heavily on Congress’ par-
tisan and ideological makeup (Bond and Fleisher
1990; Edwards 1989). The upshot, as Anthony King
(1983, 247) explained, is that “all you [the president]
really need from Congress is votes, but you need
those votes very badly.”
Putting a formal structure on these theoretical
moorings and empirical findings, Keith Krehbiel
(1998) and Brady and Volden (1998) have developed
a “pivotal politics” theory to explain U.S. lawmaking.
Building on Black’s (1948) and Downs’s (1957)
works establishing the median voter theorem, these
more general “pivotal” voter models adjust the requisite
threshold to account for two supermajoritarian
processes in Congress: the three-fifths majority
needed to overcome a Senate filibuster and the two-
thirds majority vote needed to override a presidential
veto in both chambers.
Figure 1 illustrates the pivotal politics model with
a conservative president. Per the model, when the
president prefers the status quo to some policy pro-
posal, the “pivotal voter” (o) whose preference pre-
vails is the 33rd percentile plus one senator (away
from the president). Because she decides whether a
veto will succeed or fail, she can demand that status
quos more conservative than her ideal get moved to
it, while status quos more liberal than her (but not the
60th senator) cannot be beat (see also Cameron
2000). When the president prefers some policy pro-
posal to the status quo, the “pivotal voter” (f) in the
Senate is the 60th member opposite the president’s
252 Political Research Quarterly
Figure 1
Standard (Pivotal Politics) Model
of U.S. Lawmaking with Exogenous Elections
f m o P
Distant SQ Centrist SQ Close SQ
4
side. Only when the bill reflects her ideal will she
agree to invoke cloture and allow it to pass on a final
vote. In sum, the model predicts status quos close to
the president will be adjusted to the 34th senator’s
ideal, status quos far from him will be adjusted to the
60th senator’s ideal, and centrist status quos between
the 34th and 60th senators’ preferences (in the shaded
“gridlock interval”) will be left unchanged.
Drawing from the pivotal politics model, we can
now see two ways that presidents might enjoy early
legislative success without any so-called honeymoon
effect. The first mechanism that can generate a spuri-
ous honeymoon is plain enough: the election may
yield a Congress that is more ideologically in tune
with the president than was the previous Congress.
Figure 2 illustrates how a new and more agreeable
assembly of lawmakers can lead presidents to uncom-
mon success on Capitol Hill without any genuine
honeymoon effect. In comparing the pre-election
Congress with the postelection Congress, we see
numerous liberals replaced by moderates and conser-
vatives, thereby shifting the filibuster pivot’s position
from f to f’. The result is that all status quos between
the old and new filibuster pivots, points that were pre-
viously unbeatable, can now be moved toward the
president’s ideal (to f’). Therefore, by ushering in a
congressional delegation more philosophically in
step with a president, an election can enable that pres-
ident to move laws in his preferred direction. Again,
this success does not depend on a honeymoon per se,
but rather just on changes in lawmakers’ preference
distribution.
A second mechanism that can yield an epiphe-
nomenal “honeymoon” occurs when the newly elected
president is of the opposite ideological stripe from
his predecessor. In such a situation, the definition of
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Figure 2
Epiphenomenal Honeymoon Created by
New Preferences (and Pivots)
Pre-Election
f o P
Post-Election
f’ o’ P’
pivotal voters also reverses, once again allowing pre-
viously unbeatable status quos to be defeated by
alternatives closer to the president’s ideal.
In Figure 3, the only change occurring between the
pre-election and postelection Congresses is that the
presidency switches hands from a conservative (P) to
a liberal (P’). Although lawmakers’ preferences
remain identical, the inauguration of the new presi-
dent changes the location of pivotal senators since the
different presidents will veto different bills. While the
former (conservative) president would use his veto
pen to protect changes to conservative status quos,
the current (liberal) president will gladly let such
policies be defeated. In fact, the new president and
his liberal allies in Congress should target those areas
for change—moving the policy toward the new (liberal)
president’s preference (from o to f’). As such, areas
previously protected by the conservative president’s
veto but not conservative lawmakers’ filibuster—that
is, status quos located between the 60th and 67th
most conservative lawmakers—are now subject to
being beat by more liberal alternatives. Here again,
then, we see that even if elections are exogenous to
lawmaking, newly elected presidents might enjoy
something that looks like a “honeymoon” in Congress
when, in fact, this success reflects nothing more than
a different assemblage of lawmakers.
 Beckmann, Godfrey / The Policy Opportunities in Presidential Honeymoons 253
Figure 3
Epiphenomenal Honeymoon Created by a
New President (and Pivots)
Pre-Election
f o
Post-Election
P’ o’ f’
No doubt, changes in the location of pivotal voters
can play an important role in determining the presi-
dent’s legislative fate, especially early in his term
(Brady and Volden 1998; Krehbiel 1998; see also
Bond and Fleisher 1990; Edwards 1989). Notice,
however, that inasmuch as these are the elections-as-
exogenous mechanisms drive presidents’ legislative
“honeymoons,” it is not much of a honeymoon at all.
Table 1 displays the DW-NOMINATE score for
the Senate filibuster pivot facing every newly elected
president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt entered
the Oval Office in 1932, where –1 is an extreme “lib-
eral,” +1 an extreme “conservative,” and 0 is a sena-
tor evenly positioned between them (see Poole and
Rosenthal 1997). What is noteworthy is that only
President Carter entered office with a filibuster pivot
on his side of the ideological spectrum. For all other
presidents, the pivotal politics model predicts that
even if they propose salient, campaign-tested initia-
tives early in their term (and with extreme status
quos), liberal presidents end up signing moderately
conservative laws while conservative presidents end
up penning moderately liberal ones. Suffice it to say,
if presidential honeymoons are but epiphenomenal
symptoms of election-induced changes in pivotal vot-
ers’ preferences, their reputation greatly surpasses
their reality.
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Presidential Elections beyond Selection
(Honeymoons as Consequential)
Below we revisit the policy opportunities in presi-
dential honeymoons. We start, like many before us,
dubious that elections can confer anything like a con-
tractual obligation on lawmakers to execute any spe-
cific action or to support any specific position. But
our interest is not interrogating the philosophical jus-
tification for mandates; rather, our goal is to develop
P a general theoretical model of presidential honey-
moons and deduce the implications for U.S. lawmaking.
To this end, we identify the micro-level foundations
of honeymoons, extend that logic to a spatial model
for all senators, and then deduce the macro-level pol-
icy consequences using the concept of a core.
Modeling Presidential Honeymoons
Like Peterson et al. (2003; see also Grossback,
Peterson, and Stimson 2005), we view presidential
“mandates” as a social construct, one that depends on
Washington elites’ analysis of an election’s “meaning.”
Thus, we draw from their “public-driven” theory of man-
date elections the view that inasmuch as lawmakers
perceive the president and his policy positions enjoy
electoral support among their constituents, then and
only then should reelection-seeking lawmakers factor
in the president’s election results when establishing
preferences over policies.
The question that remains is, When is this? That is,
under what conditions will lawmakers perceive the
election, at least partially, as a referendum on the pres-
ident’s policy proposals? While we agree with
Peterson et al.’s (2003) view that the answer ultimately
turns on how politicians and pundits interpret the elec-
tion, we also agree with Conley (2001) that lawmakers
are more likely to refer to election results as a policy
referendum when the president made policy initiatives
integral to his campaign.5 In short, we believe a presi-
dent’s campaign renders some of his policy proposals
“election-coded” in lawmakers’ minds, and to the
extent this occurs, then lawmakers will incorporate the
president’s election results among their constituents
into their decision making for those proposals.6 In our
view, this is the micro-level causal mechanism at the
heart of a genuine election-induced honeymoon effect.
Figure 4 maps this honeymoon mechanism into a
spatial setting for a theoretical filibuster pivot (f) with
a conservative president (P). The horizontal dimen-
sion is the senator’s “standard” position. Under the
standard (pivotal politics) model (where the president’s
254 Political Research Quarterly

Table 1
Predicted Outcome for the Standard (Pivotal Politics) Model of U.S. Lawmaking
President (Year First Senate First Pivotal Senator’s
Elected) Confronted (Year) DW-NOMINATE Scorea

F. Roosevelt (1932) 73rd (1933-1934) .10

Truman (1948) 81st (1949-1950) .14
Eisenhower (1952) 83rd (1953-1954) –.05
Kennedy (1960) 87th (1961-1962) .13
Johnson (1964) 89th (1965-1966) .09
Nixon (1968) 91st (1969-1970) –.31
Carter (1976) 95th (1977-1978) –.07
Reagan (1980) 97th (1981-1982) –.15
George H. W. Bush (1988) 101st (1989-1990) –.25
Clinton (1992) 103rd (1993-1994) .00
George W. Bush (2000) 107th (2001-2002) –.30

a. The pivotal senator is the 67th percentile senator away from the president’s side before 1975, and the 60th percentile senator away from
the president’s side since then. We identified the pivotal senator using DW-NOMINATE scores, which estimate each senator’s spatial
position vis-à-vis her or his colleagues by comparing their positions on roll-call votes (see Poole and Rosenthal 1997). Scores range from
–1 (liberal) to +1 (conservative).

Figure 4
(Honeymoon Politics) Model of U.S. Lawmaking with Endogenous Elections

fp
Spro-pres
President’s Vote Share in State

fn
Sneutral P
Standard

fa
Santi-pres

election results are exogenous to decision making), and against the president (Sneutral); (2) they decisively
this position is the only information the lawmaker support the president (Spropresident); or (3) they decisively
factors into her preferences, and therefore it reflects oppose the president (Santipresident). In the first case
the only position she will support with her vote, fol- (fn)—where the senator’s constituents are evenly split
lowing the pivotal politics logic articulated above on the president and his agenda—the elections results
(see Brady and Volden 1998; Krehbiel 1998). add no additional information as to the electoral
Now consider if this same senator weighs not only expediency of supporting or opposing the president’s
her “standard” predisposition but also the president’s “election-coded” policies. As such, we expect no
election results among her constituents, which we honeymoon effect in this case; members should just
model as the vertical dimension. To illustrate the basic follow their standard predisposition.7
model, envision a senator (f) whose constituents By contrast, now let us envision that same law-
exhibit one of three patterns: (1) they break evenly for maker if her state’s voters decisively supported the

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 Beckmann, Godfrey / The Policy Opportunities in Presidential Honeymoons 255
president’s election (fp). In seeing how well the pres-
ident and his agenda fared among her constituents,
we would expect this generally liberal senator to be
more supportive of the president’s campaign agenda
than she would if it were a “standard” issue consid-
ered under “standard” circumstances. Notice this reflects
an authentic honeymoon effect; it is the president’s
election result that affords him (and his “election-
coded” policies) greater support in Congress.
Conversely, if the filibuster pivot’s state decisively
opposed the president (fo), we would expect some-
thing of an antihoneymoon—where the senator
should want to oppose the president and his campaign-
tested proposals more than under “standard” circum-
stances. Fortunately for presidents, by virtue of winning
the election, the neutral and propresident situations
are far more common than are antipresident ones, and
thus we expect making presidential elections endoge-
nous to lawmakers’ decision making will generally
work to the president’s advantage.
Extending this micro-level honeymoon calculus to
all senators gives us a two-dimensional (honeymoon)
model of U.S. lawmaking.8 More precisely, let us
assume that senators have single-peaked Euclidean
preferences that map into R2. The first dimension repre-
sents each senator’s standard predisposition (Pi), and
the second indicates the vote share of the president in
the senator’s state (Ei). For election-coded issues early
in the president’s term, we assume each senator’s
utility is an equal and additive function of the two
dimensions, formalized as follows:
1 1
Ui = __ (Pi) + __ (Ei), where i = 1,…, n.
2 2
Identifying the Outcomes
Of course, any time we contemplate modeling legis-
lators’ policy preferences in multiple dimensions, we
must confront the potential for unpredictable and unsta-
ble outcomes due to predicaments posed by cycling
and/or agenda manipulation (Arrow 1951; Feld and
Grofman 1987; McKelvey 1976; Plott 1967; Schofield
1978, 1983; see also Riker 1980). However, while chaos
is possible, it is neither inevitable nor unavoidable, as
work developing the concept of a “core” has shown (see
Owen 1995; Tsebelis 2002). The core of a voting game,
as defined by Schofield, Grofman, and Feld (1988, 195),
“is the set of undominated outcomes, that is, those that
once in place cannot be overturned.”
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Below, we draw from this literature to compute the
core for our honeymoon model of U.S. lawmaking.
More precisely, we compute the (cloture) core in the
Senate following every newly elected president since
1932 when lawmakers’ preferences over policies
factor in both their standard predispositions and the
president’s electoral support in their state. This analy-
sis is conducted using CyberSenate™, a software
program that calculates a myriad of metrics in spatial
modeling (e.g., winsets, indifference curves, yolks,
Copeland winners, Pareto sets, and the core, among
others) for two-dimensional models.9 The appendix
describes the software’s algorithm for computing the
core under a cloture voting rule (two-thirds majority
pre-1975; three-fifths majority post-1975).
As a reminder, we model lawmakers’ “standard”
predisposition as the horizontal dimension, which we
measure using each senator’s DW-NOMINATE score—
a score that estimates each member’s typical spatial
position vis-à-vis her colleagues by comparing their
roll-call votes during an entire Congress (see Poole
and Rosenthal 1997). Beyond this standard predisposi-
tion, we add a second factor as the vertical dimension,
one that accounts for lawmakers’ election-induced
incentive to support or oppose the president’s policies
in the honeymoon period, measured as the president’s
percent of the presidential vote in each senator’s state
just prior to that Congress. We transformed the
DW-NOMINATE dimension to a 0-1 scale (liberal to
conservative), thereby putting both dimensions on a
0-1 scale and aiding interpretation.
Before turning to the model’s results, it is impor-
tant to note that the two dimensions we include are
indeed capturing two distinct constructs—a “stan-
dard” predisposition and a “honeymoon” addition. A
principle components factor analysis of senators’
DW-NOMINATE score and the president’s electoral
support in their state shows that the two factors have
38 percent uniqueness between them (37 percent if
we just look at the Congress following a first-term
president’s election). These results are buttressed by
the raw data, which show the overall correlation
between senators’ DW-NOMINATE score and their
state’s presidential vote is just .24 for all senators and
presidential elections from 1933 to 2004, .26 if we
only include the first Congress following a first-term
president’s election. Consequently, we have good
empirical reason to believe that our two-dimensional
honeymoon model does indeed offer real, distinctive
insights from the standard one-dimensional approach.
Indeed, let us turn to teasing them out.
256 Political Research Quarterly

Results Figure 5
Comparing Predicted Outcomes (Core)
To illustrate presidents’ potential for passing cen- in Standard and Honeymoon Models,
tral planks from their campaign platform early in Franklin Roosevelt (1932)
their term, let us start with two simple assumptions
that facilitate comparing the standard and honey-
moon models. First, we assume that presidents enter
office wanting to change status quos that are ideolog-
ically “extreme” in the opposite direction—that is, on
the opposite side of the filibuster pivot’s predisposition.
Second, let us assume that presidents want to move
the policy as far as possible toward their ideal—that
is, to the “right” for conservative presidents, to the
“left” for liberal ones. Because the binding constraint
when presidents prefer a policy to the status quo
tends to be lawmakers’ preferences and not the pres-
ident’s ideal, this second assumption is merely useful
for demonstrating a presidential honeymoon’s maxi-
mum potential effect.
To examine the model and its results, we start with an
in-depth analysis of two cases—Franklin D. Roosevelt
facing the 73rd Senate (1933-1934) and George
W. Bush facing the 107th Senate (2001-2002)—before
turning to the findings for all first-term presidents
since 1932.
Note: The horizontal dimension is senators’ DW-NOMINATE
score (see Poole and Rosenthal 1997), and the vertical dimension
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the 73rd is the president’s percent of the vote in their state, with each scaled
Senate (1933-1934) 0-1. The standard model’s predicted outcome is the Senate’s fili-
buster pivot, denoted by the vertical, dashed line. The honeymoon
model’s predicted outcome is the two-dimensional core, the bor-
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s overwhelming victory in der of which is indicated by the solid line. Both are computed per
the 1932 presidential election is well known. Running a two-thirds cloture rule, which was used in 1933-1934.
against an incumbent president in the midst of the
Great Depression, Roosevelt won a landslide victory
over Herbert Hoover. Not only did Roosevelt attract liberal, 1 is an extreme conservative, and .5 is exactly
57.4 percent of the popular vote, but he also won in between the two). Therefore, according to the stan-
forty-two of the country’s forty-eight states. Accordingly, dard model, President Roosevelt’s congressional
as the newly elected president headed to Washington in prospects for promoting his initiatives were not espe-
1933, he did so having garnered electoral support that cially appealing; signing moderately conservative
was both substantial and widespread. laws was not what he had in mind.
However, despite his resounding electoral victory By contrast, now let us take up the honeymoon
and strong Democratic majorities in both chambers model’s prediction for legislative outcomes in the
of Congress, Roosevelt’s legislative success was far wake of FDR’s election, as depicted in Figure 5.
from guaranteed. Indeed, looking to marshal his New Compared to the standard model’s prediction (repre-
Deal initiatives on Capitol Hill, Roosevelt faced a sented by the vertical, dashed line), the honeymoon
rather daunting hurdle from the United States Senate, model’s predicted ideological outcome (the core’s
which then required a two-thirds majority to invoke border is marked by the solid line) shows that if sen-
cloture. According to the standard model—where ators added President Roosevelt’s election results to
lawmakers do not consider the president’s electoral their standard considerations when voting on his leg-
standing when voting—the 73rd Senate’s filibuster islative agenda, the president’s congressional prospects
pivot was William E. Borah (R-ID), a moderate con- improved dramatically. While it was possible that he
servative (with a score of .55, where 0 is an extreme could get stuck signing a moderately conservative

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 Beckmann, Godfrey / The Policy Opportunities in Presidential Honeymoons 257

bill (.55), as predicted by the standard model, the Figure 6

honeymoon model predicts that the outcome could Comparing Predicted Outcomes (Core)
also have settled at a far more liberal position (.43). in Standard and Honeymoon Models,
For perspective, consider that the median Republican’s George W. Bush (2000)
ideal is .68, while the median Democrat’s ideal is .41.
Thus, while the standard model’s predicted outcome
is almost perfectly equidistant between each party’s
median senator, the honeymoon model’s includes a
predicted outcome that could reach almost all the
way to the median Senate Democrat’s ideological
predisposition.
Of course, the circumstances surrounding FDR’s
election were remarkable. His win was spectacularly
large (by contemporary standards, at least); he
enjoyed strong majorities in both chambers of
Congress; and the two-thirds requirement for cloture
means that the range of policies that could not be
overturned (i.e., the size of the core) was relatively
large. So while it may be that Franklin Roosevelt’s
election provided the opportunity for a substantial
honeymoon effect on Capitol Hill, perhaps other
presidents, elected by a smaller margin, would not
see the same sort of effect. Such is not the case, as we
show below.

George W. Bush and the
107th Senate (2001-2002)
If Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first election provided
the quintessential example of a decisive win, the
opposite can be said for George W. Bush’s election in
2000. Not only did George W. Bush fail to win a
majority of the popular vote (47.9 percent), but he did
not even garner a plurality (Albert Gore Jr. received
48.4 percent). What is more, his victory in the Electoral
College was far from clear-cut. It was not until the
U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision stopped an ongo-
ing vote recount in Florida that George W. Bush’s
537-vote margin was affirmed, thereby guarantee-
ing him Florida’s electoral votes, a majority in the
Electoral College, and election as the forty-third
President of the United States.
Beyond entering office with far less electoral sup-
port than Franklin Roosevelt, George W. Bush also
confronted a more imposing hurdle in Congress than
did FDR. His party held small majorities in each cham-
ber10—and that was in a polarized context with far
fewer “moderates” than in previous decades (Fleisher
and Bond 2004; McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006).
According to the standard model, the Senate’s fili-
buster pivot for the 107th Senate was Robert Torricelli
(D-NJ) at .35 (where 0 is an extreme liberal, 1 is an
Note: The horizontal dimension is senators’ DW-NOMINATE
score (see Poole and Rosenthal 1997), and the vertical dimension
is the president’s percent of the vote in their state, with each scaled
0-1. The standard model’s predicted outcome is the Senate’s fili-
buster pivot, denoted by the vertical, dashed line. The honeymoon
model’s predicted outcome is the two-dimensional core, the bor-
der of which is indicated by the solid line. Both are computed per
a three-fifths cloture rule, which was used in 2001-2002.
extreme conservative, and .5 is exactly between the
two). As such, if President Bush sought to amend a lib-
eral status quo to a more conservative policy, the stan-
dard model’s prediction is that he would still end up
signing a rather liberal bill into law.
Figure 6 illustrates the standard and honeymoon
models’ predictions for policy outcomes in the 107th
Senate for President Bush’s “election-coded” issues
(again, the standard model’s prediction is the dashed
vertical line; the honeymoon model’s prediction is
the area inside the core, the border of which is
denoted by a solid line). As it shows, compared to the
standard prediction of a more or less liberal outcome
(.35), the honeymoon model’s predicted outcome
ranges from moderately liberal (.45) to moderately
conservative (.56). Thus, even for President George
W. Bush—who entered office with close to the low-
est possible electoral support and enjoying only small

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258 Political Research Quarterly

Table 2
Comparing Predicted Outcomes (Filibuster Pivot and Core) for “Election-Coded” Issues
per Standard and Honeymoon Models of U.S. Lawmaking,
Newly Elected Presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush
Honeymoon Model NOMINATE Predictiona
Standard Model
President (Year First Senate First NOMINATE Predictionb Most Liberal Most Conservative
Elected) Confronted (Year) (Scaled 0–1) (% ∆ from Standard) (% ∆ from Standard)

F. Roosevelt (1932) 73rd (1933-1934) .55 .43 (+22%) .55 (0%)

Truman (1948) 81st (1949-1950) .57 .44 (+23%) .57 (0%)
Eisenhower (1952) 83rd (1953-1954) .48 .48 (0%) .61 (+30)
Kennedy (1960) 87th (1961-1962) .57 .37 (+35%) .57 (0%)
Johnson (1964) 89th (1965-1966) .55 .33 (+40%) .55 (0%)
Nixon (1968) 91st (1969-1970) .35 .35 (0%) .54 (+54%)
Carter (1976) 95th (1977-1978) .47 .34 (+28%) .44 (+6%)
Reagan (1980) 97th (1981-1982) .43 .45 (+5%) .54 (+26%)
George H. W. Bush (1988) 101st (1989-1990) .38 .40 (+5%) .49 (+30%)
Clinton (1992) 103rd (1993-1994) .50 .41 (+18%) .49 (+2%)
George W. Bush 43 (2000) 107th (2001-2002) .35 .45 (+29%) .56 (+60%)

a. These predictions reflect the most liberal and conservative DW-NOMINATE scores bordering the two-dimensional core (see Poole and
Rosenthal 1997). They are scaled to range from 0 (liberal) to 1 (conservative).
b. These predictions reflect the pivotal—that is, the 67th percentile away from the president’s side before 1975, the 60th percentile since
then—senator’s DW-NOMINATE score. They are scaled to range from 0 (liberal) to 1 (conservative).

majorities on Capitol Hill—the honeymoon model
shows he could do far better if senators incorporated his
election results into their consideration of his election-
coded policy initiatives. In fact, while the honeymoon
model predicts Roosevelt could achieve an outcome
closer to his ideal in absolute terms, in terms of poten-
tial improvement over the standard model’s predicted
outcome, President Bush’s potential honeymoon effect
was nearly three times larger than President Roosevelt’s.
Newly Elected Presidents and Senates from
Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush
Given the striking differences between the elections
they won and the Senates they faced, finding that the
honeymoon model showed substantial propresident
policy opportunities for both Franklin D. Roosevelt and
George W. Bush suggests that this honeymoon poten-
tial is robust. Here we show that it is by examining
the nature of the honeymoon model’s core across a
variety of contexts—namely, for each new modern pres-
ident given the Senate he confronted as he entered
office.
Table 2 summarizes the standard and honeymoon
models’ predicted ideological outcomes in the U.S.
Senate for each newly elected president since Franklin
Roosevelt. The basic result is plain: inasmuch as law-
makers have pondered a president’s electoral results
when voting on his agenda, then presidents have expe-
rienced authentic legislative honeymoons; in every
case, the honeymoon-predicted ideological outcome
dominates the standard prediction (from the presi-
dent’s perspective).11 Compared to the standard
model, the honeymoon model’s predicts minimum
improvements from 0 to 29 percent, maximum ones
from 18 to 60 percent.
Beyond the central finding that endogenizing pres-
idential election results into lawmakers’ voting has
propresident effects on U.S. lawmaking, several other
insights are especially interesting. For one, we see that
honeymoons tend to dovetail with congressional pre-
dispositions, not override them. As such, Democrats’
advantage in the Senate over the past seventy-five
years has provided Democratic presidents a unique
opportunity to pass their campaign proposals intact,
especially during honeymoons. If we look at presi-
dents’ absolute policymaking potential during the
honeymoon—that is, the proximity between the clos-
est ideological point in the core and the president’s
side—liberal presidents have had the chance to exert
much greater influence in U.S. lawmaking since 1932.
Not only did Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and
John Kennedy enter office with especially lucrative
opportunities for translating liberal campaign items
into liberal legislative accomplishments, but Dwight
Eisenhower is the only Republican who entered office

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 Beckmann, Godfrey / The Policy Opportunities in Presidential Honeymoons 259
with above-average policymaking potential. At the
other extreme is George H. W. Bush, the lone presi-
dent whose best possible honeymoon outcome was
still on the other side of the ideological spectrum.
However, if one way to investigate the policy
opportunities in presidential honeymoons is to look at
presidents’ absolute potential for passing ideologi-
cally driven policies (as above), another way is to
examine the relative difference between the honey-
moon and standard models’ predictions. In many
ways, this conception of honeymoons—that is, an
improvement over what will be expected when more
standard considerations set in—better reflects collo-
quial references to honeymoon effects. As a matter of
fact, the question White House officials ponder is,
What can we accomplish now that we will not be able
to accomplish later?
Comparing presidents according to the honeymoon
model’s best potential outcome with the standard
prediction, again, several interesting findings emerge.
While Democrats scored better on the absolute policy-
making potential, Republicans have tended to gain
more from the honeymoon. Among the top seven
honeymoon opportunities since 1923, five have been
for Republicans. In fact, George W. Bush witnessed
the biggest potential honeymoon effect of any mod-
ern president. Thus, if he was to get something close
to his preferred policies adopted, it was likely to be
early in his term. Another interesting finding is that
John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson had some of the
largest potential honeymoon effects of all modern
presidents, meaning that they not only had a unique
opportunity to pass liberal policies (in an absolute
sense), but much of that opportunity depended on the
extra support the honeymoon won them. Finally, it is
worth noting that Bill Clinton, whose election
included a viable third-party candidate, entered
offered with especially low electoral support and, in
turn, with an especially anemic honeymoon.
All told, then, the policy opportunities in presiden-
tial honeymoons are significant. Inasmuch as law-
makers factor a president’s electoral results among
their constituents into their voting decisions, his
potential for passing his legislative agenda always
improves, often dramatically. These opportunities are
real in that they are independent of changes in the
policy makers (and preferences) before and after the
election, and they are robust in that the effect holds
across a wide range of electoral and congressional
contexts. To be sure, substantial, genuine honeymoon
effects are possible even if a president wins a close
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election and faces an oppositional Congress. Thus
Paul Light’s (1999, 45) counsel seems apt: “The first
year offers the greatest opportunity for establishing
the domestic program . . . to wait is to squander the
most important advantage.”
Discussion
John F. Kennedy once remarked that on the path to
the Oval Office, future presidents stake out their position
on everything “from cranberries to creation.” And
over the course of a modern presidential campaign,
the candidates certainly do tender position papers and
stump speeches that span an impressive swath of the
policy landscape. However, while the breadth of posi-
tions is noteworthy, in practice contemporary presi-
dential campaigns are anchored by only a few policy
proposals. Indeed, today’s presidential aspirants tend
to run on a narrow agenda complemented by a focused
message—one that gets repeated over and over again.
It is these precious few policy initiatives that become
synonymous with the candidate and his campaign for
the nation’s highest office and then become his top
priority once there.
The familiar question is whether this election-
induced fusion between the public, the president, and
his policies has any impact on Congress. While
recent work has unpacked the micro-level founda-
tions that could lead presidents to enjoy an early hon-
eymoon with particular lawmakers, to date we have
lacked an account that mapped out the macro-level
implications for U.S. lawmaking. This article sought to
delineate the link between individual-level incentives
and collective decision making. In the honeymoon
model of lawmaking shown here, results showed that
was that when lawmakers factor the president’s elec-
toral results among their constituents into their decision
making, not only does this give the president extra sup-
port on roll-call votes, but it also allows newly elected
presidents to see major, campaign-tested policy
initiatives pass closer to their ideal than we would
otherwise expect. As such, the theoretical model
developed here demonstrated that newly elected
presidents can experience a bona fide honeymoon
on Capitol Hill, one truly constructed on an elec-
toral foundation.
Notably, the honeymoon potential demonstrated in
this article builds from rather conservative assump-
tions. It does not depend on presidents’ postelection
bounce in public opinion polls, and it does not
260 Political Research Quarterly
depend on lawmakers’ irrational deference to the new
chief executive. What is more, our model does not
account for recent presidents’ penchant for undertak-
ing postelection campaigning in support of their leg-
islative agenda. Instead, the honeymoon opportunities
we see merely depend on the assumption that law-
makers refer, in part, to a president’s electoral support
among their constituents when voting on his agenda.
So while we believe the basic model proposed here is
useful for demonstrating presidential elections can
have genuine and substantial policy effects, we also
believe that future additions and amendments can add
verisimilitude and thereby offer greater insight into
the interactions between elections and lawmaking.
Finally, we conclude by noting that our results
underscore the increasing importance political scientists
have assigned to presidential transitions, the appoint-
ment-confirmation process, White House organization
and decision making, as well as administration officials’
private and public lobbying activities. For in a world
where presidential honeymoons provide real policy-
making opportunities but no guarantees, these other
elements of staffing, organizing, and running a mod-
ern White House become all the more important for
determining whether an administration capitalizes on
its honeymoon potential.
Appendix
Core Computation Algorithm in CyberSenate
Assume members have Euclidean preference in a two-
dimensional issue space, and each having a vote of weight
1, that is, one-person, one-vote. If members are ranked by
their ordinal position on for all possible lines in the policy
space, each a line has a core when the decision rule equals
or exceed majority rule.a The set of points that are in the
core for all one-dimensional lines are undominated and
thus constitute the core for two dimensions.
Simplifying computations somewhat, we do not have to
consider all possible lines, rather those lines for which the
order of members projected on the line differ. For example,
members projected onto a line, L, and all lines parallel to
L will produce the same ordinal ranking of members.
Hence, it is sufficient to consider a single point in the issue
space and imagine rotating a line about that point, noting
those angles for which the ordinal ranking of members
changes. The number of such angles is finite, not infinite,
making the computation tractable.
Associated with each projection line is a perpendicular
line that divides members on the projection line into two
sets, one set being a minimum winning coalition. Call this
perpendicular line a cut line or quota line. A subset of these
quota lines will pass infinitesimally close two members.
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The line actually passing through each such pair of members
is called a limiting quota line. Each limiting quota line divides
the space into two half-planes, one containing a minimum
winning coalition, the other a nonwinning coalition. The
intersection of all the minimum winning coalition half-planes,
if nonempty, constitutes the core for a two dimensional spa-
tial voting game. Such is how CyberSenate’s algorithm cal-
culates a two-dimensional core for some set of voters.
Note: CyberSenate™ is new software made available to us by
WinSet, LLC (www.winset.com).
a. Keith Krehbiel’s (1998) concept of a “gridlock interval” exem-
plifies this point. Policies in this interval cannot be beat by some
supermajority preferring something else, and thus constitute a core.
Notes
1. Our study of presidential honeymoons’ impact on lawmaking
is, of course, related to the broader literature on presidents’ abil-
ity to leverage public support—of himself and his agenda—in
Congress (see Brace and Hinckley 1992; Canes-Wrone 2005;
Edwards 1983, 2003; Kernell 1997). In that literature, a familiar
conclusion is that public opinion’s potential for bolstering the
president’s position is highly conditional—depending on the pop-
ularity of the president (Brace and Hinckley 1992; Ostrom and
Simon 1985; Rivers and Rose 1985) and his policy position
(Canes-Wrone 2005) and also voters’ ability to compare law-
makers’ choices to the president’s wishes (Arnold 1990; Canes-
Wrone and de Marchi 2002). Thus, postelection honeymoons
appear to be a good place to expect presidents’ public support
factors into lawmakers’ decision making. For early in the first
term, not only are the successful president’s initiatives considered
while the election is still salient in lawmakers’ minds but also
under the specter of abundant news coverage.
2. Additionally, Derouen, Peake, and Ward (2005) found that
perceptions of presidential mandates decrease presidential nomi-
nees’ duration to, and defeats during, Senate confirmation.
3. This is not to say presidents are unable to influence
Congress, but rather just to say that to do so, presidents and their
aides must tailor their agenda and lobbying to fit lawmakers’
incentives (see Covington 1988; Covington, Wrighton, and
Kinney 1995; Neustadt 1990; Sullivan 1988, 1990).
4. The Senate first introduced the cloture option (Senate Rule
22) in 1917, which then required two-thirds majority. In 1975, the
number of votes required for cloture was reduced to three-fifths.
5. In this way, our approach is slightly different from
Grossback, Peterson, and Stimson (2005). While they regard
Conley’s (2001) “president-driven” theory of mandate elections
as conflicting with their “public-driven” theory, we view the two
as more-or-less complementary. Indeed, we think the election-
induced fusion between the president, policy, and public is what
drives presidents’ honeymoons in Congress.
6. An interesting question is how long an issue remains “elec-
tion-coded.” While such a question is outside the scope of our
model—we take micro-level honeymoons as given and examine
the macro-level consequences—related work by Peterson et al.
(2003) suggested election-induced “mandates” can persist for
some time, but with steady decay—a half-life they estimated at
roughly 150 days.
 Beckmann, Godfrey / The Policy Opportunities in Presidential Honeymoons 261
7. In fact, generalizing this voters-evenly-divided case to
all senators gives us the functional equivalent of the standard
model.
8. Because ours is a first attempt to tease out micro-level hon-
eymoons’ macro-level implications, we begin with this basic
model on the idea that parsimony is especially useful early on.
However, we note that future work revising this model will surely
add to our benchmark findings. Such alternations could include
varying the dimensions’ salience, allowing differential weights
by lawmaker, incorporating a time horizon, adding partisan
agenda-setting, among many others.
9. CyberSenate™ is new software made available to us by
WinSet, LLC (www.winset.com).
10. Actually, the Senate was evenly split between Republicans
and Democrats, and only the vice president’s tie-breaking vote
afforded Republicans majority status as the 107th Congress began.
11. It is worth noting that our inferences presume presidents
act strategically. If winning the election baits a president into
overreaching—say, by pushing initiatives not central to the cam-
paign or by refusing to compromise to positions that can pass—
then he can squander whatever policy opportunities that electoral
success may have provided.
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