Polls and Elections Using Approval of the President's Handling of the Economy to Understand Who Polarizes and Why

Partisan polarization has become an important feature of American politics. Those studying political institutions (Binder 1999, 2003; McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006) as well as public opinion and voting (Barrels 2000; Bond and Fleisher 2001; Gelman 2008; Hetherington 2001) have documented the increasing importance of partisanship. Additionally, Prior (2007) has shown how the expanding media environment contributes to a polarized electorate. Perhaps not surprisingly, Republicans' and Democrats' approval of the president has also polarized in recent years (Fox 2009; Jacobson 2007, 2009). (1) Despite evidence that presidential approval ratings influence all branches of government, we know very little about whose evaluations are polarizing and for what reasons. (2) We do not know whether some partisan groups are polarized more than others. For example, is it the most or the least educated who are driving the polarization? Similarly, we do not know much about the conditions in which Democrats and Republicans have polarized in their presidential evaluations. To address these questions, we utilize all available Gallup and CBS polls on economic approval of the president from 1993 to 2005--almost 200 surveys in total. These surveys offer several advantages. First, the frequency of the surveys allows us to evaluate partisan opinion change on a monthly basis. Second, by obtaining the individual-level data for each survey, we are able to disaggregate respondents by both their education level and partisanship. Although research shows similar patterns of opinion change across education groups (Enns and Kellstedt 2008; Page and Shapiro 1992; Soroka and Wlezien 2008), there are strong theoretical reasons to suspect that when we disaggregate by partisanship and education, differences will emerge (Zaller 1992). Finally, we selected these surveys because each asks respondents whether they approve of the president's handling of the economy. Focusing on approval of the president's handling of the economy allows us to better isolate the key sources of polarization. Unlike approval of the president's overall job performance, where Democrats and Republicans might observe the same reality and formulate divergent evaluations, for economic approval, we expect partisans of all stripes to prefer a strong economy over a weak one. We do not mean to imply that Democrats and Republicans prefer identical economic conditions. Our point is simply that approval of the president's handling of the economy is more likely to be rooted in common considerations than approval of job performance. Thus, we might consider economic approval a least likely case for observing polarization. Furthermore, objective economic indicators, such as the unemployment and inflation rates, provide measures of these common considerations. More than job approval, economic approval allows us to isolate the factors that lead partisans to diverge in their evaluations of the president. This analysis of economic approval focuses on the ways in which partisan groups use the same information differently. In this context, polarization arises when Democrats and Republicans respond differently to the same information about current economic conditions. Because the analysis is across administrations, we can distinguish between different preferences (e.g., Republicans might care more about inflation than unemployment) and polarization (e.g., partisans responding differently depending on which party is in control of the presidency). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Data The analysis focuses on responses to the question, "Do you approve or disapprove of how [the president] is handling the economy?" (3) In order to reduce the sampling error inherent in surveys, we use Stimson's (1999) WCALC algorithm to combine responses from both Gallup and CBS polls. (4) We generate nine different series that correspond with the most educated (college degree or more), middle educated (some college education), and least educated (high school degree or less) Democrats, independents, and Republicans. …