Republicans voters have displayed a zeal for their candidates that Democrats could only envy...Really?
Adam Nagourney wrote in the NY Times:
HERE’S another way Republican voters tend to be different from Democratic voters: They like — no, love — their presidential candidates. Not always, of course. But from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush to Dwight Eisenhower, Republicans voters have displayed a zeal for their candidates that Democrats could only envy.
Is this true? Do Republican voters have a greater “zeal” for their presidential candidates than Democrats? Let’s try to figure this out using some data.
Let’s use presidential approval ratings. Let’s assume there’s a constant 40-20-40 split among Democratic, Independent and Republican voters across time (a strong assumption)**. If Republican voters have a greater zeal, then we should see the lowest approval for a Republican president higher than the lowest approval rating for a Democratic president. So what do we see from Eisenhower onward? The lowest approval for a Republican was Nixon at around 24% (Gallup 8/2-5/74) and the lowest for a Democrat was Clinton at around 36% (Yank/TIME/CNN 5/26-27/93). But Nixon had Watergate! Okay, so let’s see who had the second lowest approval rating. That would be…another Republican…George Bush (the junior) at around 26% (Newsweek 6/18-19/07). But what we really want is presidential approval broken down by partisanship. That will be coming soon…
On a side note, I always wonder where a journalist comes up with a statement like this? I guess I’ll just send him an email and ask.
** For a great discussion on partisanship in polling, see Franklin’s blog post.
Comments
Why not use measures of affect for the presidents from the ANES broken down by party identification? These measures should get at likability more than job approval ratings. It seems feasible that someone could like the president in an affectual way, but disapprove of his job performance.
Posted by: a student | December 19, 2007 11:48 AM