Presidential Approval and the Mixed Blessing of Divided Government

Abstract

Divided government provides ambiguous and conflicting information about which branch of government to hold accountable for government performance. The implication for presidents, who are easy targets of blame, is that they are less likely to be held accountable for government's failures during periods of divided government because the public has a plausible alternative for affixing responsibility: the U.S. Congress. Because presidents are punished more heavily for negative outcomes than they are rewarded for favorable ones, we argue that a divided government context has the effect of increasing presidential approval relative to periods of unified government. At the individual level, using data from the 1972-1994 National Election Studies we show that divided government increases the probability that respondents approve of a president's job performance. This effect is even stronger among citizens who are knowledgeable about control of government. Examining approval at the aggregate level from 1949 to 1996, we find further evidence that divided government boosts presidential approval ratings.The authors wish to thank Richard A. Brody, Ross A. Miller, Daniel Ponder, Craig Volden, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.1 This is not to suggest that the national government as a whole is less productive (Mayhew 1991); rather that the product is less to the president's liking.

Taxation and presidential approval: separate effects from tax burden and tax structure turbulence?

“…popularity (Nicholson et al, 2002). This argument is in line with the "clarity of responsibility" hypothesis suggested by Powell and Whitten (1993).…”

Tax policy and yardstick voting in Flemish municipal elections

“…Given that, on average, they are more punished for negative developments than they are rewarded for positive developments, fragmented governments suffer a smaller electoral loss (Nicholson et al, 2002). Also, voters can shift their votes between different government parties (Powell and Whitten, 1993).…”

“…In as far as expenditures measure the quantity (and/or quality) of public output, we would expect a positive effect on the vote, as we already control for the cost of output though the tax rates. Analogously to the tax rates 14 The argument is also true for divided government (Nicholson et al, 2002). 15 We also include neighbouring municipalities in the Brussels and Walloon region, as the context is very similar.…”

Wars, Presidents, and Popularity: The Political Cost(s) of War Re-Examined

“…In the first two columns, we simply extend the baseline model presented in Table 2 (columns (1) and (2)) with the 'Warstart' and political variables described at the end of section 3.1. This creates a more complete model that is closer in line with those generally estimated in the literature (e.g., Cuzán and Bundrick, 1999;Nicholson et al, 2002;Geys and Vermeir, 2008). In column (3), we exclude DoD baseline spending from the model.…”

“…11 The lower accountability of divided governments (cf. Powell and Whitten, 1993;Nicholson et al, 2002) is assessed by including a dummy variable equal to 1 where the president's party does not control either House or Senate, 0 otherwise. Finally, we control for the Iran-hostage affair 12 , Persian Gulf War (dummy equal to 1 in 1991:1), 9/11 (dummy equal to 1 in 2001:4) 13 , Watergate (dummy equal to 1 in 1973:2-1974:2), Iran-Contra affair (dummy equal to 1 in 1986:4-1987:1) and President Clinton's Lewinsky affair (dummy equal to 1 in 1998:1-1999:1).…”