Dennis M. Simon

Promise and Performance: A Dynamic Model of Presidential Popularity

The growth of public opinion measurement in the last 40 years has added a new dimension to the study of presidential behavior. Not only have public evaluations become more newsworthy, but the importance of public support as a resource and determinant of political survival has been enhanced. Recent scholarship on the presidency has documented the value of public support, attempted to identify its major determinants, and speculated about the manner in which presidents might influence these evaluations. This research is designed to integrate these concerns into a single model and thereby to examine the interdependence between public support as a product of citizen decisions and as a political resource. First, a characterization of the citizen as an evaluator of the president is developed and used to construct an equation of presidential approval. Next, we develop an equation that explains presidential effectiveness in the legislative arena and illustrates the operation of public support as a presidential resource. The public support and legislative effectiveness equations are specified as a simultaneous equation system, estimated, and evaluated. The results of the model are then used to expand the conventional wisdom about the determinants of public support, to examine the consequences of the reciprocal relationship between public support and legislative success, and to generate ex post forecasts of President Reagans support from 1981 through 1983.

Foreign Policy and Presidential Popularity: Creating Windows of Opportunity in the Perpetual Election

Variations in public support for the president have been explained in three different ways. First, approval has been viewed as controlled by the law of inevitable decline. Second, public support has been characterized as a function of an “environmental connection” between chief executives and macrofeatures of the political and economic landscape. Finally, some view “political drama” (e.g., speeches, trips, diplomatic agreements, and so on) as an important role in determining the popularity of the president. The present analysis offers a comprehensive model of public support for the president which draws on all three explanations and partitions the presidentially relevant factors into domestic and foreign policy subsets. The comprehensive model is operationalized and estimated using 573 Gallup presidential approval polls from January 1949 through December 1984. Empirical analysis demonstrated that factors derived from all three explanations contribute to the prediction of public support. In addition, the analysis evaluated the relative impact of domestic and foreign influences and located potential levers that presidents might pull to influence this popular support.

The President, Referendum Voting, and Subnational Elections in the United States.

This research is designed to generalize a referendum voting model and investigate its ability to account for the aggregate outcomes of elections for the House, Senate, governorships, and upper and lower chambers of state legislatures. Our analysis shows that these outcomes are influenced by the same systematic short- and long-term forces. In addition to this common referendum structure, the analysis reveals that there is a common response to random shocks, a subtle form of interdependence found in systems of seemingly unrelated regressions.

THE IMPACT OF TELEVISED SPEECHES AND FOREIGN TRAVEL ON PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL

Considerable attention has been devoted in recent years to the use of political drama by the president, with the most discretionary forms of drama-speeches and foreign travel- receiving much scrutiny. In fact, there has arisen a conventional wisdom which asserts that televised speeches and foreign travel by the president (1) have increased over time, (2) exert a uni- formly positive impact on public evaluations of the presidents performance, and (3) can therefore be used as a strategy for in- fluencing the presidents approval ratings, a vital resource for the modern president. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate this conventional wisdom and thus assess the value of televised speeches and foreign travel as influences on presidential ap- proval. The paper first defines political drama and casts the con- ventional wisdom in the form of three propositions. It next devel- ops a research strategy for evaluating these propositions in an appropriate manner. Finally, the paper tests the propositions. The results cast considerable doubt on the conventional wisdom and lead to the conclusion that the use of political drama is not an all-purpose strategy guaranteed to halt declines or replenish siz- able losses of presidential approval.

Presidents, Governors, and Electoral Accountability

This paper is designed to demonstrate that citizen evaluations of presidential performance operate as an influence on voting in gubernatorial elections. The discussion first highlights the debate over the impact of presidential support in national elections and presents aggregate-level evidence suggesting that this impact extends to gubernatorial contests. Next, an individual-level model of the gubernatorial vote is estimated using a pooled data set from the election year surveys conducted by the Center for Political Studies from 1972 through 1986. The estimated model reveals that evaluations of the president operate as an influence on the voting preferences of citizens. A series of diagnostic exercises shows that this influence is not an artifact of a particular survey, type of election, or presidential administration. A series of simulations reveals that the impact of these evaluations is sizable enough to alter both the voting of individuals and the outcomes of gubernatorial contests. The discussion concludes by using these results to reflect upon the character of electoral accountability in the United States.

Political Ambition and Women in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1916-2000

This analysis demonstrates how political ambition theory can be applied to women who have served in the U.S. House of Representatives: under what conditions do political women manifest discrete, static, and progressive ambition? Our database includes all women elected to the House between 1916 and 2000. In differentiating between discrete and static ambition, we find that among congressional widows, there are measurable differences between those who seek reelection and those that step down, with independent political experience and working partnerships in their husband’s political careers being especially important. In addition, we show that women in the House are strategic when deciding whether to run for the Senate. Progressive ambition—the decision to run for higher office—flows from a calculus that incorporates the probability of winning, the value of the office, and the costs of running. As such, it appears that the women of the House respond to the same strategic forces as their male counterparts.

When Women Run Against Women: The Hidden Influence of Female Incumbents in Elections to the U.S. House of Representatives, 1956–2002

Although it is well known that “when women run, they win as often as men,” the literature on women and campaigns suggests that we should see significant differences in races involving male and female incumbents. Do female incumbents face the same competitive environment as their male counterparts in elections for the U.S. House of Representatives? Using the existing literature on the role of stereotypes and gender traits in campaigns, we formulate two hypotheses to explain the relationship between gender and incumbency. The Competition Hypothesis asserts that compared to male incumbents, women running for reelection will face more competition in retaining their seats. The Gender Effect Hypothesis predicts that female incumbents will induce other women to enter the race. On the basis of an analysis of House elections from 1956 to 2002, we find considerable support for both hypotheses. In House elections, female incumbents have a “hidden influence”: Not only do they face more competition but they also increase the participation of female candidates in their own party as well as the opposition party. Although female incumbents win at the same rates as male incumbents, they face a much more competitive environment.

The Political Glass Ceiling

Abstract Why has the integration of women into elective office, particularly Congress, been so slow? We argue that incumbency and the general lack of competition in American elections serve as a “political glass ceiling,” having a dampening effect on the number of women running in both primary and general U.S. House elections. With data from House elections from 1978-1998, we find that although there have been general upward trends in the number of women running in primaries, winning primaries, and winning election to Congress, there is a distinct gender gap between the parties. The growth in the presence of women since 1988 is largely a Democratic phenomenon. In addition, women are strategic in their decisions regarding whether or not they will run; the likelihood of success influences the decision to become a candidate. Women are far more likely to run in districts with an open seat than they are in districts where they would face a safe incumbent. This implies that the number of women entering the House depends upon the political cycle of redistricting or unanticipated events and “crises” that create large numbers of open seats.

The Roll Call Behavior of Men and Women in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1937–2008

Our analysis investigates the ideological differences in the voting records of male and female members of the U.S. House of Representatives using a relatively novel natural-experiment research design to account for variations in district-level factors. We ask whether it makes a difference when a woman succeeds a man or a man succeeds a woman in a given congressional district. To answer this question, we created a database consisting of predecessor-successor pairs in all elections to the House between 1937 and 2008. In the case of intraparty change, we find that there is no significant difference in the voting scores of female and male members of the House; the roll call scores of female Democrats who replace male Democrats are virtually identical, as are the scores of male Democrats who replace female Democrats. The same results hold for Republicans. We also demonstrate that when interparty change occurs in a district, there is no evidence that the resulting ideological change is greater when the successor or predecessor is a woman. In other words, the voting records of consecutive members of Congress that come from a particular district are virtually the same regardless of their gender.

The trail blazers: women as third-party candidates in elections to the U.S. House of Representatives, 1912–2012

ABSTRACT Historically, very few female candidates have ever won election to the U.S. House of Representatives. In addition, very few third-party candidates have ever won election to the House. With data from 1912 to 2012 on more than 54,000 candidates, we provide an historical overview of third-party activity in general elections to the House and the participation of female candidates. Our analysis shows that third parties have been a consistent presence in elections to the House and a major avenue for women. Using a vector autoregression model and Granger causality tests, we also show that from 1912 to 1964, women nominated by third parties were “trail blazers” potentially influencing the movement of women into the major parties. We also show that since 1964, the presence of women among third-party nominees has been influenced by the increasing proportion of women as major-party nominees. Our analysis thus uncovers a “hidden history” that enhances our understanding of how women have participated in over a century of electoral politics.