Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:15:16.787Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Public Approval, Policy Issues, and Partisanship in the American Presidency: Examining the 2019–2020 Trump Impeachment and Acquittal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2021

Meena Bose Open the ORCID record for Meena Bose [Opens in a new window]  and
Craig M. Burnett Open the ORCID record for Craig M. Burnett [Opens in a new window]
Meena Bose
Affiliation:
Hofstra University, USA
Craig M. Burnett
Affiliation:
Hofstra University, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although much of the United States undoubtedly was aware of the impeachment hearings and trial for President Donald Trump in 2019–2020, the extent to which information about those events influenced the public remains unknown. Building on scholarship about public opinion and democratic governance, we attempted to fill this knowledge gap through a unique survey. We asked half of our sample to answer three factual questions pertaining to Trump’s first impeachment trial. We ran a quasi-experiment on the other half, trying to influence their view of the trial by informing them of the same three facts that we asked the first group. The quasi-experiment demonstrates that support for acquittal was largely static and that partisanship strongly influences whether the public accepts the veracity and importance of political information. Consequently, civic knowledge today appears to have a limited—perhaps even nonexistent—effect on public attitudes about American politics.

Type
Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 266 - 274
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bail, Christopher A., Argyle, Lisa P., Brown, Taylor W., Bumpus, John P., et al. 2018. “Exposure to Opposing Views on Social Media Can Increase Political Polarization.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115.37:9216–221.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bisgaard, Marin, and Slothuus, Rune. 2018. “Partisan Elites as Culprits? How Party Cues Shape Partisan Perceptual Gaps.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (2): 456–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burnett, Craig M. 2021. “Replication Data for: Public Approval, Policy Issues, and Partisanship in the American Presidency: Examining the 2020 Trump Impeachment and Acquittal.” Harvard Dataverse https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/145ZMF.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delli Carpini, Michael X., and Keeter, Scott. 1996. What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Druckman, James N., and Jacobs, Lawrence R.. 2015. Who Governs? Presidents, Public Opinion, and Manipulation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faris, Rob, Roberts, Hal, Etling, Bruce, Bourassa, Nikki, Zuckerman, Ethan, and Benkler, Yochai. 2017. “Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 Presidential Election.” Cambridge, MA: Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, August 16.Google Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. 1981. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Ford, Matt. 2017. “Trump’s Press Secretary Falsely Claims, ‘Largest Audience Ever to Witness an Inauguration, Period.’” The Atlantic, January 21.Google Scholar
Gottfried, Jeffrey, Stocking, Galen, Grieco, Elizabeth, Walker, Mason, Khuzam, Maya, and Mitchell, Amy. 2019. “Trusting the News Media in the Trump Era.” Pew Research Center: Journalism & Media, December 12.Google Scholar
Hibbing, John R., and Theiss-Morse, Elizabeth. 2002. Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Izadi, Elahe. 2020. “Poll Finds Americans Disapprove of Media’s Handling of Coronavirus. But It’s the Same Polarized Picture as Ever.” Washington Post, March 27.Google Scholar
Joslyn, Mark R., and Haider-Markel, Donald P.. 2014. “Who Knows Best? Education, Partisanship, and Contested Facts.” Politics & Policy 42 (6): 919–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jurkowitz, Mark, Mitchell, Amy, Shearer, Elisa, and Walker, Mason. 2020. “U.S. Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation Divided.” Pew Research Center: Journalism & Media, January 24.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. Jr. 1966. The Responsible Electorate. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuklinski, James H., Quirk, Paul J., Jerit, Jennifer, Schwieder, David, and Rich, Robert F.. 2000. “Misinformation and the Currency of Democratic Citizenship.” Journal of Politics 62 (3): 790–816.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lauter, David. 2020. “Why Don’t Views on Impeachment Budge? Polarized News.” Los Angeles Times, January 24.Google Scholar
Lee, Jae Kook, Choi, Jihyang, Kim, Cheonsoo, and Kim, Yonghwan. 2014. “Social Media, Network Heterogeneity, and Opinion Polarization.” Journal of Communication 64 (4): 702–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levendusky, Matthew, and Malhotra, Neil. 2016. “Does Media Coverage of Partisan Polarization Affect Political Attitudes?” Political Communication 33 (2): 283–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupia, Arthur. 2016. Uninformed: Why People Know So Little About Politics and What We Can Do About It. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merkley, Eric. 2020. “Anti-Intellectualism, Populism, and Motivated Resistance to Expert Consensus.” Public Opinion Quarterly 84 (1): 24–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyhan, Brendan, and Reifler, Jason. 2010. “When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions.” Political Behavior 32:303–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, Thomas E. 2016. “News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard Kennedy School, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, December 7.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Shawn W. 2002. The Not So Common Sense. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sides, John. 2016. “Stories or Science? Facts, Frames, and Policy Attitudes.” American Politics Research 44 (3): 387–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spohr, Dominic. 2017. “Fake News and Ideological Polarization: Filter Bubbles and Selective Exposure on Social Media.” Business Information Review 34 (3): 150–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tucker, Joshua A., Guess, Andrew, Barberá, Pablo, Vaccari, Cristian, et al. 2018. “Social Media, Political Polarization, and Political Disinformation: A Review of the Scientific Literature.” March 19. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3144139 or http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3144139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Thomas, and Porter, Ethan. 2019. “The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes’ Steadfast Factual Adherence.” Political Behavior 41:135–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaller, John R. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Bose and Burnett Replication Materials on Dataverse

Replication Materials

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/145ZMF
Link