Go to next abstractjeffrey e. cohen, jon r. bond,
richard fleisher, and john a. hamman
State-Level Presidential
Approval and Senatorial Support
Legislative Studies Quarterly
XXV:577-90
The
effect of public presidential approval on congressional support for the
president has been the subject of considerable debate and controversy.
Systematic, quantitative studies have been unable to demonstrate convincingly
that public approval leads to greater legislative support for the president. The
lack of constituency-level public approval data has hindered resolution of the
controversy. Studies have relied upon either election results or national-level
approval data as substitutes, but both alternatives are problematic as measures
of public approval at the constituency level. In this paper, we use new data
gathered from 50 state surveys in September 1996 that asked respondents, among
other things, to rate the job performance of the president. We test whether or
not public approval in the states affects senators’ support for the president
and also look at some hypotheses: whether or not minority party status, running
for reelection, electoral vulnerability, and presidential coattails interact
with constituents’ approval of the president to affect senators’ roll-call
support for the president. With controls for partisanship and ideology of the
senator and the state, analysis indicates no support for the hypothesis that
public approval of the president leads to greater presidential support among
senators.