Why Does Presidential Popularity Decline? A Test of the Expectation/Disillusion Theory

According to the "expectation/disillusion" interpretation of the decline of presidential popularity over time, popularity declines as unrealistically high expectations of presidential performance inevitably give way to more realistic assessments. This paper puts that interpretation and several specific aspects of it to the test through analysis of data from a series of nationwide polls conducted between 1977 and 1979. Lee Sigelman is Professor and Chairman, and Kathleen Knight is Assistant Professor, in the Department of Political Science, University of Kentucky. The data employed in this paper were made available by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. The data for CBS News/New York Times Polls, 19771979, were originally collected by CBS News and the New York Times. Neither the collectors of the original data nor the Consortium bear any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here. We are grateful to Richard Brody and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 47:310-324 ? 1983 by the Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc. 0033-362X/83/0047-310/$2.50 This content downloaded from 157.55. 39.127 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 06:51:36 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor. org/terms WHY PRESIDENTIAL POPULARITY DECLINES 311 of this paper is to test what seems to us to be the most plausible explanation that has yet been offered, the so-called "expectation/ disillusion theory" (Stimson, 1976). Explaining the Growth of Presidential Unpopularity What accounts for the large-scale erosion in public support that has beset each postwar presidency except Eisenhower's and the prematurely terminated Kennedy's? Mueller, adapting one of Anthony Downs's (1957) ideas, sought the answer in an antipresidential "coalition of minorities. " According to this explanation, the longer a president stays in office, the more decisions he makes, and the more decisions he makes, the more people he antagonizes. Even if each decision gains widespread acceptance, each is also likely to displease at least a few people. "A clever opposition, under appropriate circumstances, could therefore form a coalition of these intense minorities until it had enough votes to overthrow the incumbent" (Mueller, 1973: 205). In our view, this explanation falls short in several respects. In the first place, a coalition of minorities cannot form without being abetted by a "clever," well-organized opposition, and in recent decades the out-party has certainly not always been well-organized, let alone clever. Irrespective of the quality of the opposition, a coalition of minorities should emerge only under "appropriate" circumstances. Mueller did not indicate what these circumstances might be, but at the very least they ought to include a public that is well informed and highly issue-oriented, along with a president who is either sufficiently willing or sufficiently inept to make an incessant series of decisions which alienate different segments of his support coalition. There is also reason to believe that it is not presidential decisions per se but the results of these decisions which affect the president's public standing (Kernell, 1978:521). If this is true, then an explanation which focuses on presidential decision making seems somewhat misdirected. According to a second explanation, length of time in office has no substantive meaning of its own, but simply provides the context within which various phenomena, such as economic fluctuations, wars, and international rally points, occur. It is these time-based phenomena and not time itself which influence presidential popularity (Kernell, 1978). Consistent with this view, Kernell (1978:520) reports that when the effects of various time-based phenomena are held constant, the passage of time no longer has any impact on presidential popularity. However, Kernell's argument does not explain why popularity almost always declines over time. The only answer that This content downloaded from 157.55. 39.127 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 06:51:36 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor. org/terms 312 LEE SIGELMAN AND KATHLEEN KNIGHT Kernell's interpretation seems to permit is that substantive time-based phenomena (i.e., occurrences in the domestic and international arenas) invariably begin to deteriorate very early in the president's term and continue to do so until some point in the third year-not, we think, a very realistic assumption. The real problem is to determine why the reaction to the substance of presidential actions nearly always has a cumulatively negative impact on presidential popularity. Mueller's "coalition of minorities" interpretation provides an answer, but one which addresses the individual-level opinion dynamics underlying aggregate popularity change in a very oblique fashion. This brings us to an alternative interpretation which has been most clearly articulated by James Stimson (1976) but which, as Stimson acknowledged, is derived from Mueller's War, Presidents and Public Opinion. The basic idea underlying this interpretation is that "in the process of being elected, the president invariably says or implies that he will do more than he can do, and disaffection of once bemused supporters is all but inevitable" (Mueller, 1973:206). In contrast to the "coalition of minorities" interpretation, which places the blame squarely on the president's shoulders, Stimson (1976) argued that the erosion of presidential popularity is impervious to presidential initiatives and is best understood as a result of the inevitable disjuncture between presidential promise and performance. Stimson assumed, on the basis of considerable evidence, that many Americans are poorly informed and have no well-developed policy preferences. In these circumstances, the "utter simplicity" of campaign pledges contributes to the spread of naive expectations about what a candidate will be able to accomplish if he is elected. In