Polls, Elite Opinion, and the President: How Information and Issue Saliency Affect Approval

In: Presidential studies quarterly: official publication of the Center for the Study of the Presidency, Band 36, Heft 4, S. 584-605

Abstract

Our experiment examines the effect of information and issue saliency on presidential approval. Subjects received either pro‐Bush or anti‐Bush information on the president's Iraq War and Social Security policies in the form of newspaper opinion pieces and/or polls, and then evaluated Bush's overall job performance and his handling of these two issues. Information and polls that supported Bush's Social Security policy led subjects to support Bush on this issue, but attitudes were resistant on the more salient Iraq issue. The experiment demonstrates that poll results, more than simply reflecting aggregate opinion, influence attitudes on less salient issues.