Presidential Popularity and Presidential Elections: An Update and Extension RICHARD BRODY Anp LEE SIGELMAN ‘Tus paper updates and extends findings reported by Sigelman (1979), who discovered, contrary to earlier indications (Mueller, 1973), that the outcomes of presidential elections can be predicted with some accuracy on the basis of the president's rating in the final preelection popularity poll. The 1980 election provides an additional case to work withthe eighth time an incumbent president has sought reelection since 1938, when the Gallup presidential popularity question was first asked—and it is of obvious interest to see how closely this most recent case fits into the pattern established earlier. We also bring three previously ignored cases (the 1952, 1960, and 1968 elections) into the analysis by shifting the dependent variable from votes for the incumbent president to votes for the candidate of the incumbent president's party. This substitution is based on indications that presi- Gential popularity has a powerful carryover effect on the outcome of midterm congressional elections (Tufte, 1975). If congressmen of the president’s party are held responsible for the incumbent's perfor- mance, can we afford to overlook the possibility that the presidential candidate of the president's party is also judged accordingly? Abstract The popularity of the president as ascertained months prior to a presidential aieetion permits an accurate prediction of the election outcome, even when the incum- bent president is not running for reelection. Richard Brody is Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. Lee Sigelman is Professor and Chairman in the Department of Political Science, University of Ken- tucky, ‘ube Opinion Quurtely Vol, 47.325-228 © 198% by the Trasees of Colunbia University Pubtshed by Ehevier Sctence Pushing Co, Ie. nh 62x43 0047-52982.50 Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.ns RICHARD BRODY AND LEE SIGELMAN Findings Sigelman’s seven-election regression model was: Predicted Vote - Share for = 38.0 + .291 Popularity (R = .74;R? = .45) wD Incumbent Party (.119) The expected 1952, 1960, 1968, and 1980 vote shares of the incumbent President's party, calculated from Eq. (1), are all higher than the actual vote shares, the mean deviation being 5.9 percent and the range running from 2.9 percent (1952) to 7.8 percent (1980). Despite the consistency of the overestimates, all are within striking distance; indeed, the overall difference between expected and observed votes falls well short of statistical significance (chi-square = 3.15, df = 4, n.s.). The model's performance is all the more impressive in light of the nontrivial third-party voting that took place in both 1968 and 1980, the two years for which the seven-election model generates the least accurate predictions. So even with these departures from presidential politics as usual” included in the model, the four “new” elections fit the seven-election model quite well If we had used the first 10 elections (1940-1976) to forecast the Outcome of the eleventh (1980), the prediction equation would of course be somewhat different: Predicted Vote _ Share for = 32.2 + .368 Popularity (R = .81;R? = .61) Q) Incumbent Party (.094) The expected 1980 vote share for the incumbent party (the Demo- crats) was 4.8 percent more than Carter actually received but remarkably close to the combined Carter-Anderson vote. By comparison, Sigel- man’s seven-election model predicts a 48.7 percent Democratic vote share in 1980 as an outgrowth of Carter's 37 percent popularity in the final preelection Gallup Poll. Thus, bringing the three nonincumbent elections into the model actually improves the model's performance, at least insofar as the 1980 election is concerned. In forecasting future elections, data from all 11 elections should be employed, in which case the prediction equation becomes: Predicted Vote _ Share for = 29.8 + .406 Popularity (R = 84:7? = .67) 8) Incumbent Party (089) ‘The I1-election scatterplot is shown in Figure 1. The addition of the 1980 election and the three nonincumbent elections leads to a more Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.[PRESIDENTIAL POPULARITY: UPDATE AND EXTENSION a oer . % OF VOTES WON BY INCUMBENT PARTY 40k caddie 56"'33" 88 38 4 48 46"S1 “84°57 60 63 66 69 72 75 PRESIDENTIAL POPULARITY Figure 1, The Relationship Between Presidential Popularity and Election Outcomes precise estimate than can be obtained from either Eq. (1) or Eq. (2), as can be seen by a comparison of the R statistics associated with each equation. We can also use Eq. (3) to revise Sigelman's “rule of thumb” for assessing probable election outcomes. Table | translates presidential popularity into the expected share of the popular votes captured by the candidate of the incumbent president's party, based on Eq. (3). Whereas Sigelman (1979:534) concluded that “’an incum- bent whose last preelection popularity figure is 45 percent or less can expect to lose or eke out the narrowest of victories in the popular vote column,” the break-even point for a nominee of the president's party appears, on the basis of the present analysis, to be a 50 percent presidential popularity rating. Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.Eo [RICHARD BRODY AND LEE SIGELMAN Table 1. Presidential Popularity and the Predicted Popular Vote 4 Presidential Popularity Then the Incumbent ‘in the Last Preelection Party's Predicted Share "Survey Stands at of the Popular Vote ts 25% 40.0% 30 42.0 3s 44.0 40 46.0 45 48.1 50 50.1 55 S24 oo 542 is 56.2 Conclusion The findings reported here suggest that the incumbent president and his party are held accountable at the time of the presidential election for the performance of the incumbent over the previous four years (Fiorina, 1981). The fact that there is a link between presidential Popularity and presidential voting means that data on presidential Popularity can be used to generate reasonably accurate predictions of the outcome of presidential elections, even when the incumbent is not running for reelection, References Fiorina, Morris 1981 Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale Uni- versity Press. Mueller, John 1973 War, Presidents and Public Opinion. New York: Wiley Sigelman, Lee 1979 “Presidential popularity and presidential elections.” Public Opinion Quar- terly 43:532-34 Tufte, Edward 1975 “Determinants of the outcome of midterm congressional elections.” American Political Science Review 69:812-26. Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved.