Substance versus Style: Distinguishing Presidential Job Performance from Favorability

Abstract

Although much of the systematic, over‐time research on the presidency has focused on presidential approval and how it varies in response to economic conditions and world events, there is growing interest in the impact that the public's character evaluations of the president can have on presidential approval. In an age when “image is everything,” it is important to understand how these character evaluations of the president vary over time and to assess their impact on presidential approval. Here, I develop a measure of the favorability of the president and show its utility for studying the personal dimension of the public's assessment of the president and its impact on the president's job performance rating.