Constituent Approval and Presidential Support: The Mediating Effect of Party and Chamber

Abstract

Approval affects congressional support for the president, with a reelection motivation the main linkage mechanism. Yet, the literature has not fully explored this linkage due to theoretical barriers and serious data limitations. Using a new theory and novel data, we argue that the impact of the reelection motivation should vary with contextual factors. This paper identifies two such factors rarely explored together: member party and chamber. We hypothesize that opposition party legislators will be more responsive to constituent approval than co-partisans, but this partisan differential will hold only for the Senate, not the House. We test our hypothesis on House and Senate data, from 2006 through 2012, using multiple regression poststratification (MRP) to measure district and state approval of the president. The analysis finds support for the chamber differences hypothesis that has implications for partisanship and representation.