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Trust the Party Line

Issue Ownership and Presidential Approval From Reagan to Clinton

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

This study incorporates the issue-ownership concept into the aggregate presidential approval literature. A content analysis of media coverage from the Reagan through Clinton administrations of four party-owned issues—Social Security or Medicare, environmental protection, national defense, and size of government—demonstrates that when the agenda is dominated by issues on which the president’s party enjoys credibility, approval increases, controlling for the typical economic and event variables. Similarly, increased coverage of issues owned by the opposition party leads to decreased approval, all things equal. Thus, when the media primes a party-owned issue, the public responds by evaluating the president consistent with his credibility on the issue. These relationships are robust across the typical functional forms used to model approval.

Key Words: presidential approval • issue ownership • priming • media coverage

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