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Approval Ratings (approval + rating)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences83%

Selected Abstracts

Accurate forecasting of the undecided population in a public opinion poll

JOURNAL OF FORECASTING, Issue 6 2002
Christopher Monterola
Abstract The problem of pollsters is addressed which is to forecast accurately the final answers of the undecided respondents to the primary question in a public opinion poll. The task is viewed as a pattern-recognition problem of correlating the answers of the respondents to the peripheral questions in the survey with their primary answers. The underlying pattern is determined with a supervised artificial neural network that is trained using the peripheral answers of the decided respondents whose primary answers are also known. With peripheral answers as inputs, the trained network outputs the most probable primary response of an undecided respondent. For a poll conducted to determine the approval rating of the (former) Philippine president, J. E. Estrada in December 1999 and March 2000, the trained network predicted with a 95% success rate the direct responses of a test population that consists of 24.57% of the decided population who were excluded in the network training set. For the undecided population (22.67% of December respondents; 23.67% of March respondents), the network predicted a final response distribution that is consistent with the approval/disapproval ratio of the decided population. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Building Public Support from the Grassroots Up: The Impact of Presidential Travel on State-Level Approval

PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2005
JEFFREY E. COHEN
Presidential travel around the nation has become commonplace, yet very little research exists on its impact on public opinion. Although presidents "go public" for a variety of reasons, such as building and maintaining public support, existing research has been limited to examining the effects of going public on national-level support for the president. In this study, we argue that presidents target state publics (and other sub-national publics) when they travel around the nation. To test this possible linkage between travel and approval, we utilize data on presidential travel and newly available data on state-level presidential approval ratings. After controlling for various factors that affect the level of presidential approval at the state level, we find that a presidential visit results in a modest, statistically significant increase in the president's state-level job approval rating. Our analysis indicates that this effect is present only in non-election periods and in large states, suggesting that presidents are more likely to stimulate public support when appearing presidential rather than as candidates for office or as partisan leaders. [source]

Congress, Presidential Approval, and U.S. Dispute Initiation

FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 4 2008
David J. Brulé
Do presidents initiate disputes in response to low public approval ratings? Although research on the diversionary use of force finds links between poor economic conditions and military disputes, findings evaluating the effect of presidential approval ratings typically fail to support the diversionary hypothesis. But this research tends to neglect the role of presidential-congressional relations in the president's foreign policy making processes. This paper applies the policy availability argument to the puzzle: legislative constraints on presidential action during periods of low public approval compel the president to pursue alternatives that he can implement largely on his own in order to display his leadership skills,including the use of military force abroad. The argument is tested by examining the interactive effects of congressional support for the president and presidential approval ratings on the propensity to initiate militarized interstate disputes from 1949 to 2000. The results indicate that the president is more likely to use force in response to low presidential approval when faced with low congressional support. [source]

The Effects of the George W. Bush Presidency on Partisan Attitudes

PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2009
GARY C. JACOBSON
Evidence from the eight years of the George W. Bush administration confirms that the public standing of the president's party rises and falls in concert with popular evaluations of his job performance. Reactions to the president affect the favorability ratings of his party, party identification measured individually and at the aggregate level,particularly among younger voters,as well as the party's electoral performance. Bush's second term, which provoked the longest period of low and downward-trending approval ratings on record, thus inflicted considerable damage on the Republican Party's image, popular support, and electoral fortunes. [source]

Building Public Support from the Grassroots Up: The Impact of Presidential Travel on State-Level Approval

PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2005
JEFFREY E. COHEN
Presidential travel around the nation has become commonplace, yet very little research exists on its impact on public opinion. Although presidents "go public" for a variety of reasons, such as building and maintaining public support, existing research has been limited to examining the effects of going public on national-level support for the president. In this study, we argue that presidents target state publics (and other sub-national publics) when they travel around the nation. To test this possible linkage between travel and approval, we utilize data on presidential travel and newly available data on state-level presidential approval ratings. After controlling for various factors that affect the level of presidential approval at the state level, we find that a presidential visit results in a modest, statistically significant increase in the president's state-level job approval rating. Our analysis indicates that this effect is present only in non-election periods and in large states, suggesting that presidents are more likely to stimulate public support when appearing presidential rather than as candidates for office or as partisan leaders. [source]

Partisan Polarization and Congressional Accountability in House Elections

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2010
David R. Jones
Early research led scholars to believe that institutional accountability in Congress is lacking because public evaluations of its collective performance do not affect the reelection of its members. However, a changed partisan environment along with new empirical evidence raises unanswered questions about the effect of congressional performance on incumbents' electoral outcomes over time. Analysis of House reelection races across the last several decades produces important findings: (1) low congressional approval ratings generally reduce the electoral margins of majority party incumbents and increase margins for minority party incumbents; (2) partisan polarization in the House increases the magnitude of this partisan differential, mainly through increased electoral accountability among majority party incumbents; (3) these electoral effects of congressional performance ratings hold largely irrespective of a member's individual party loyalty or seat safety. These findings carry significant implications for partisan theories of legislative organization and help explain salient features of recent Congresses. [source]