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Presidential coattails are frequently addressed in American politics, but we know little about their impact on the outcomes in elections for the House. Yet it is here that they are most significant. If presidential coattails do affect congressional elections, they can be the cause of increased support for the president (from new representatives of his party) and increased support for policy change (from representatives of a new generation). This research examines the relationship between how well a president runs in a congressional district and the success of the congressional candidate of his party in winning the district. The analysis is done for each of the six presidential elections from 1952 through 1972, and is done separately for the North and South as well as for the country as a whole. In every instance, constituency party strength is controlled in order to isolate the impact of the presidential candidate on the congressional outcome. The basic conclusions are that presidential coattails have had a declining impact on the outcomes in congressional elections since 1952 and that in recent elections their impact has declined to the vanishing point. This, it is argued, is primarily due to the increasing lack of competitiveness of congressional districts.

Presidential prestige or popularity has often been cited as an important source of presidential influence in Congress. It has not been empirically and systematically demonstrated, however, that such a relationship exists. This study examines a variety of relationships between presidential prestige and presidential support in the U.S. House of Representatives. The relationships between overall national presidential popularity on the one hand and overall, domestic, and foreign policy presidential support in the House as a whole and among various groups of congressmen on the other are generally weak. Consistently strong relationships are found between presidential prestige among Democratic party identifiers and presidential support among Democratic congressmen. Similar relationships are found between presidential prestige among the more partisan Republican party identifiers and the presidential support by Republican congressmen. Explanations for these findings are presented, and the findings are related to broader questions of American politics.

USING HEADCOUNT DATA COVERING THE YEARS 1953-74 AND FOCUSING ON THE JOHNSON ADMINISTRATION (1963-68), THE RESEARCH INVESTIGATES WHETHER OR NOT PRESIDENTS EXPERIENCE A "BANK ACCOUNT PRESIDENCY"; WHETHER THEY LOSE CONGRESSIONAL SUPPORT AND INFLUENCE OVER THEIR TENURE IN OFFICE. THIS PAPER APPLIES A NEW DATA SET AND DEFINES A USEFUL APPROXIMATION OF PRESIDENTIAL INFLUENCE CALLED PRESIDENTIAL SWAY. THE PAPER TESTS TWO EXPECTATIONS ABOUT THE "TEMPORAL PATH" OF INITIAL SUPPORT AND SWAY. THE PAPER ALSO TESTS FOUR CONJECTURES TO ACCOUNT FOR TEMPORAL PATHS. THE EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT PRESIDENT JOHNSON LOST INITIAL SUPPORT BUT MAINTAINED SWAY OVER HIS TENURE. THE RESEARCH THEN COMPARES THE JOHNSON EXPERIENCE WITH THAT OF THREE OTHER PRESIDENTS, FINDING NO SUPPORT FOR THE BANK ACCOUNT MODEL. IT FURTHER DEMONSTRATES THAT DYNAMIC FORCES LIKE THE PRESIDENT'S PRESTIGE, THE STATE OF THE ECONOMY, THE ORGANIZATION OF THE OPPOSITION, AND THE FOCUS OF THE ADMINISTRATION'S AGENDA HELP DETERMINE ITS TEMPORAL PATH.

The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics are the essential guide to the study of American political life in the 21st Century. With engaging, new contributions from the major figures in the field The Oxford Handbook of the American Presidency provides the key point of reference for anyone working in American Politics today.

Influencing the policy agenda has long been viewed as one of the most important sources of political power. For decades, scholars have maintained that the president has the most significant role in setting the policymaking agenda in Washington, but little systematic empirical work has been done to measure the president's influence. We explore the president's success in focusing the issue attention of Congress and the mass media by evaluating time-series measures of presidential, mass media, and congressional attention to five issues: crime, education, health care, U.S.–Soviet relations, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. We find that most of the time the president reacts, responding primarily to fluctuations in media attention and world events. In domestic policy, we find a more interactive relationship, one that appears to offer the president the opportunity to act in an entrepreneurial fashion to focus the attention of others in the system on major presidential initiatives.