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Scholars have debated the importance of declining political trust to the American political system. By primarily treating trust as a dependent variable, however, scholars have systematically underestimated its relevance. This study establishes the importance of trust by demonstrating that it is simultaneously related to measures of both specific and diffuse support. In fact, trust's effect on feelings about the incumbent president, a measure of specific support, is even stronger than the reverse. This provides a fundamentally different understanding of the importance of declining political trust in recent years. Rather than simply a reflection of dissatisfaction with political leaders, declining trust is a powerful cause of this dissatisfaction. Low trust helps create a political environment in which it is more difficult for leaders to succeed.

Scholars have debated the importance of declining political trust to the American political system. By primarily treating trust as a dependent variable, however, scholars have systematically underestimated its relevance. This study establishes the importance of trust by demonstrating that it is simultaneously related to measures of both specific and diffuse support. In fact, trust's effect on feelings about the incumbent president, a measure of specific support, is even stronger than the reverse. This provides a fundamentally different understanding of the importance of declining political trust in recent years. Rather than simply a reflection of dissatisfaction with political leaders, declining trust is a powerful cause of this dissatisfaction. Low trust helps create a political environment in which it is more difficult for leaders to succeed. (American Political Science Review / FUB)

"Two award-winning political scientists provide the psychological key to America's deadlocked politics, showing that we are divided not by ideologies but something deeper: personality differences that appear in everything from politics to parenting to the workplace to TV preferences, and which would be innocuous if only we could decouple them from our noxious political debate"--

The politics and party system of the late Civil War era are strikingly similar to what we have in the present day. Elections were consistently close; race, culture, immigration, and populism were salient issues; and states almost always voted for the same party in election after election. The states that supported Democrats then, however, mostly support Republicans now, and vice versa. In 1896, though, a new party system began to emerge. In this article, we evaluate bygone elections alongside contemporary ones to assess whether 2016 might be the beginning of something new in American electoral politics. Are national politics likely to follow the familiar pattern of the last four presidential races, or are Americans going to be presented altogether different choices? Our analysis suggests that race and populism are guideposts for potential change in 2016: if the concerns of race continue to define political conflict, the electoral map should change little, but if economic populism eclipses race as it did in 1896, a new political era may be ushered in in America.

Americans most often think about government in terms of its ability to grapple with issues of redistribution and race. However, the September 11 terrorist attacks led to a massive increase in media attention to foreign affairs, which caused people to think about the government in terms of defense and foreign policy. We demonstrate that such changes in issue salience alter the policy preferences that political trust shapes. Specifically, we show that trust did not affect attitudes about the race-targeted programs in 2004 as it usually does, but instead affected a range of foreign policy and national defense preferences. By merging survey data gathered from 1980 through 2004 with data from media content analyses, we show that, more generally, trust's effects on defense and racial policy preferences, respectively, increase as the media focus more attention in these areas and decrease when that attention ebbs. Adapted from the source document.