Presidents, Prosperity, and Public Opinion

A president skillful enough, or fortunate enough, to presideover a healthy economy is rewarded with public support. Thispaper examines two conceptions of the individual citizen thatmight underlie this relationship. A president's popularity mightdecline when economic times are bad because citizens in effectblame him for their personal hardships—the pocketbookcitizen hypothesis—or because they see the president asfailing to cope adequately with national economic problems,quite apart from the economic dislocations of private life—thesociotropic citizen hypothesis. Across a variety of tests, resultsfrom national surveys covering the Nixon, Ford, and Carter presidenciesconsistently supported the sociotropic hypothesis. The paperconcludes by suggesting several promising explanations for thefindings, and by exploring their normative implications.