A LITERATURE REVIEW OF PRESIDENTIAL PUBLIC APPROVAL

Kendra Strawderman
PLAP 3500: Presidential Power
April 28, 2021
Word Count: 2,340
 Introduction

According to Gronke and Newman (2009, 1), Gallup has been asking Americans about

their approval of the president since the 1930s. Although many Americans are not that interested

in what presidents do or have a good understanding of what presidents are supposed to do, they

still form opinions about presidents (Donovan et al. 2020, 1202). Political scientists have a vast

amount of data on citizens’ approval of presidents because of polling, but the real question lies in

how Americans make decisions about how they feel about presidents and what factors contribute

to their decision. When looking at the literature surrounding the question, “What determines

public approval of the president’s job performance?” many would start with Mueller (1970),

which identifies five factors that contribute to presidential public approval and correlates them to

Gallup data with up to 86% accuracy. Even this early work, however, acknowledges that it is

difficult to apply the same factors to each president or time period (Mueller 1970, 34). Much of

the research on presidential approval ratings done after Mueller (1970) focuses on factors.

Through my literature review, I have identified changes in the research on presidential approval

ratings that can be divided into 3 eras: research on factors that contribute to presidential

approval, research on public perceptions of factors which contribute to public approval, and

research on how priming and political polarization have altered the factors which contribute to

public approval. Much of my research has been guided by Gronke and Newman’s (2009) chapter

“Public Evaluations of Presidents” published in The Oxford Handbook of the American

Presidency, which provides a historical overview of literature on presidential public approval.

Through my analysis, I conclude that presidential approval ratings have historically relied on

factors such as the state of the economy and war, but more recently, these historical factors have

been superseded by party identification because of increasing polarization.

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 Research focused on factors contributing to presidential approval

Mueller (1970) is a foundational guide for understanding research centered around

identifying which factors contribute to presidential approval. In his study, Mueller takes already

available presidential approval data from presidents Truman to Johnson and attempts to work

backward to find the factors that can explain the data. Mueller focuses on 4 main factors: the

coalition of minorities or honeymoon effect, which predicts a decline in presidential approval

over the course of the president’s term; events, whether they be rally events or events with

negative implications, such as scandals; the state of the economy; and war. Using these four

factors alone, Mueller retroactively predicts the approval ratings with 22% variance. Dissatisfied,

he decides to add in a fifth factor which “incorporate[s] parameters designed to allow for the

special character of each administration” (1970, 27). With this step, he does not add in new

variables but changes the weight of existing variables for each administration. For example, he

increases the weight of the war variable for President Truman but not President Johnson, as he

claims, “the Korean War has a large, significant, independent negative impact on President

Truman…but the Vietnam War had no independent impact on President Johnson” (Mueller

1970, 28). In the end, Mueller recognizes that this retrospective method is not useful for

predicting approval of future presidents. Nevertheless, his work serves as a foundation for

determining factors that contribute to approval.

Using similar methods to Mueller (1970), Eichenberg, Stoll, and Lebo (2006) evaluate

the approval ratings of President George W. Bush using the four factors of the honeymoon

effect, the economy, rally events, and the cost of war. Additionally, these authors add in a

variable to account for what they call the autoregressive nature of presidential approval

(Eichenberg, Stoll, and Lebo 2006, 789). To account for this variable, they use error correction

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models, which correct for the lag in approval that accompanies the public’s lag in exposure to

certain information, such as total battle deaths, which is part of the war variable (794). This is

one way to accommodate the difference between a variable and the public’s perception of that

variable. For their results, most significantly, the authors found that “Once the U.S. involvement

in Iraq began, public assessments of the president became oblivious to the status of the

economy” (801). Additionally, they found that only two events, 9/11 and the start of the Iraq

War, were significant enough to alter the president’s approval ratings (797). Lastly, they provide

evidence that President Bush did not enjoy a honeymoon effect at the start of his first term and

may have even faced an anti-honeymoon effect (796). Overall, Eichenberg, Stoll, and Lebo

(2006) build upon Mueller’s (1970) analysis of factors that influence public approval of

presidents and begin to take into account how the public’s perceptions of those factors affect

approval. Additionally, their analysis is useful for evaluating how factors can supersede each

other because Bush was a wartime president.

Research on public perception of factors contributing to presidential approval

Ostrom and Simon (1985) build on the method of creating a model with factors that

predict presidential approval by taking into consideration the public’s perception of said factors.

They also introduce the idea that the president is not just a passive observer of their level of

support and can influence their own approval (Ostrom and Simon 1985, 335). First, the authors

recognize that the public has expectations about presidential job performance (336).

Additionally, the media allows citizens to simplify the complex political environment, and

citizens make decisions about their approval by weighing their expectations and perceived

performance of the president (337). In their methods, instead of using measures such as

unemployment rate or number of war casualties to measure the factors of economy or war, the

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authors instead evaluate those factors through the lens of the citizen. Instead of measuring

reality, they measure perception. Using this method, they come up with some interesting claims

related to legislative success on domestic policy, foreign policy decision making, and economic

prosperity. They claim that for every 13-point drop in legislative success, presidential approval

will decline by one point (351). Additionally, they claim that every time the U.S. directs conflict

at the USSR, presidential approval will increase by up to four points (351). These statements

present interesting scenarios when it comes to studying presidential approval, but it is important

to note that the authors only studied Reagan’s presidency. Additionally, the authors recognize

that presidential approval can vary greatly by time period; for example, Reagan’s tenure was

dominated by foreign policy issues (352).

Another article that adds flavor to the factor model of predicting presidential approval is

Kagay (1999). This article focuses solely on the Clinton presidency and how scandal can affect

presidential approval. This analysis is interesting because of the way the public can perceive

scandal. The Lewinsky scandal surrounded sex, something the public could easily understand

when compared to complex issues they normally have to evaluate, such as war or the economy.

Additionally, this analysis explores how the public can separate their views on the president as a

person from their views on the president as the leader of a country. For his methods, Kagay

conducted phone interviews throughout the year surrounding the Lewinsky scandal, and his

findings were significant. First and foremost, “at the same time that the public criticized Clinton

as a man, they expressed approval of the way he was performing his presidential duties (Kagay

1999, 452). At the time, the economy was good, crime was down, there was a budget surplus,

and the nation was at peace (454). In addition, Kagay found that much of the public viewed

Clinton’s attackers during the impeachment as politically motivated. Polarization was on the rise,

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and Clinton’s approval ratings likely stayed high because the electorate already knew and liked

Clinton, viewing his critics as partisans (458). Lastly, Kagay concluded that the public did want

Clinton punished, just not removed from office, which likely contributed to members of

Congress choosing to impeach but not remove him (460). This research illuminates the variation

in public approval of presidents and begins to factor polarization into the equation.

Research on how priming and polarization have changed presidential approval

Moving into the last section of research on presidential approval, each article discussed in

this section comes from the 2000s, ending with an article from 2020. First, Kriner (2006) looks

at Gallup data and explores variance within presidential approval ratings. Using this method,

Kriner identifies events that increased the volatility of approval ratings specifically within the

Roosevelt presidency, such as peacetime unemployment, the start of war, and an increase in

American casualties (Kriner 2006, 4). This finding is interesting, considering that a low rate of

volatility suggests that a president has a consistent base. Approval ratings are means, but two

ratings that are the same could have very different spreads. These findings are significant on their

own, but Kriner goes a step further by exploring how Roosevelt uses his radio addresses to

increase his own approval ratings (31). He claims that FDR’s radio addresses should lead to

greater ambivalence in his core supporters’ perceptions of him, but the data suggests that among

relief recipients, variance increased after radio addresses (36). Although this research starts to

acknowledge that presidents can act to influence their approval ratings, the author does not find

significant evidence that Roosevelt’s radio addresses increased his approval ratings.

Druckman and Holmes (2004) really start to dive into the idea that a president can

influence their own approval ratings. As I mentioned when discussing the Clinton article, the

public does not have the energy or expertise to research every issue relevant to evaluating the

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president (Druckman and Holmes 2004, 758). Druckman and Holmes argue that through the use

of priming, the president can influence the public to view him more favorably by emphasizing

issues he is strong on (757). To demonstrate the effect of priming, the authors perform a content

analysis on one of George W. Bush’s State of the Union addresses and code the address for how

long he spends on each topic. For this speech, Bush chose to emphasize homeland security and

did not focus as much on the economy or the war in Afghanistan (761). Through a lab

experiment and a national survey, the authors observed that people who watched the speech gave

Bush higher approval ratings overall and on specific policy issues (766). Additionally,

participants also had enhanced perceptions of his leadership effectiveness after watching the

speech, perhaps because of his focus on foreign policy and “get tough” tone (767). Through this

research, Druckman and Holmes provide evidence that “the president can use rhetoric to

influence his own approval by priming the issues that underlie approval evaluations” (774). This

paper only analyzed the effect of one speech, but I think the results are promising and

presidential rhetoric and priming should be researched further in relation to presidential

approval.

In contrast to the papers I discussed on factors that influence presidential approval,

Donovan et al. (2020) argue that increasing polarization can supersede the original factors that

contribute to presidential approval, specifically the economy. Their main argument is that

polarization has caused the public to become more motivated by party than rationality when it

comes to making political decisions (Donovan et al. 2020, 1202). Using regression, the authors

isolate the economic measure in Gallup presidential approval data from presidents Reagan

through Obama. Their analysis suggests that economic perceptions have an impact on in-

partisans but not out-partisans (1209). Additionally, when they looked at each president

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individually, they found that the effect of polarization is very recent (1209). The economy was

an important predictor for the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton presidencies, but the relationship has

weakened over time (1211). Therefore, past research that emphasized factors like the economy

and war as important to presidential approval may have been accurate for that time period, but

polarization may now be the leading factor for recent presidents. This article was published in

2020, and although it does not include data on Presidents Trump or Biden, I think it provides the

most accurate picture of the factors behind presidential public approval for modern presidents.

Conclusion

Returning to my guiding document of Gronke and Newman (2009), I argue that the

research on presidential public approval has shifted over time, beginning with research on factors

that influence presidential approval, expanding to include data on the public’s perceptions of

those factors, and evolving to include changes in media and partisanship that have caused

priming in presidential rhetoric and polarization to become more important. Even though the

American public does not have expertise on the presidency, they form opinions about the

president’s performance that are reflected in polls and elections that decide who serves as the

leader of the free world. In addition, Gronke and Newman note that “high approval ratings can

be a powerful resource for presidents as they work to achieve their policy goals while low or

eroding rates can make it harder to move the president’s agenda (2009, 1).

The people are ultimately calling the shots, and polling data has long allowed political

scientists to know where Americans stand, but the mystery of how the public decides on

presidential approval has been illuminated by some of the research discussed here. Starting with

Mueller’s (1970) factors of the honeymoon effect, events, the economy, and war, the research

has grown to include factors like scandal, as highlighted by the piece on Clinton, priming

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through presidential rhetoric, and recent polarization. Factors deemed important have been added

and taken away over time, as different eras have required different criteria for the evaluation of

presidents. Kriner (2006) showed how different events can change the volatility and spread of

presidential approval ratings, and Eichenberg, Stoll, and Lebo (2006) and Donovan et al. (2020)

demonstrated how different factors can trump others in certain situations like war or a hyper-

partisan environment. Overall, research on presidential approval has evolved to keep up with

evolving trends and eras within presidential approval ratings, but with only 46 presidencies,

political scientists have a long way to go at accurately determining factors that contribute to

presidential approval ratings.

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 References

Donovan, Kathleen, Paul M. Kellstedt, Ellen M. Key, and Matthew J. Lebo. 2020. "Motivated
Reasoning, Public Opinion, and Presidential Approval." Political Behavior 42(4):
11201–1221.

Druckman, James N., and Justin W. Holmes. 2004. “Does Presidential Rhetoric Matter?
Priming and Presidential Approval.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 34(4): 755–78.

Eichenberg, Richard C., Richard J. Stoll, and Matthew Lebo. 2006. “War President: The
Approval Ratings of George W. Bush.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50(6): 783–808.

Gronke, Paul, and Brian Newman. 2009. “Public Evaluations of Presidents.” In The Oxford
Handbook of the American Presidency, eds. George C. Edwards and William
Howell. New York: Oxford University Press, 232–53.

Kagay, Michael R. 1999. "Presidential Address: Public Opinion and Polling During
Presidential Scandal and Impeachment." The Public Opinion Quarterly 63(3): 449–63.

Kriner, Douglas L. 2006. "Examining variance in presidential approval: The case of FDR in
World War II." Public Opinion Quarterly 70(1): 23-47.

Mueller, John E. 1970. "Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson." The American
Political Science Review 64(1): 18–34.

Ostrom, Charles W., and Dennis M. Simon. 1985. "Promise and Performance: A Dynamic
Model of Presidential Popularity." The American Political Science Review 79
(20): 334–58.