“Why are Trump’s approval ratings for his response to COVID-19 so high when he’s (clearly messing up/spreading misinformation/exploiting it for partisan purposes)?”
See political science research...
See political science research...
1. Politicians get far more political payoff for responding to disasters than for preventing them - @namalhotra washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/…
2. Partisan identity determines nearly everything about how Americans are responding to this crisis, far more than education or news consumption - @TomPepinsky @ThatSaraGoodman @sgadarian tompepinsky.com/2020/03/27/the…
3. Rally effects are real, whether due to enhanced symbolic power of president’s leadership role, or opposition party becoming cowed into muting criticism - various, see this summary by Matthew Dickinson sites.middlebury.edu/presidentialpo…
4. Although Americans say they don’t trust the government, most actually do, and that trust can go up in a crisis - Chanita Intawan and Stephen Nicholson journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.108…
5. In general, presidents benefit from divided government by taking credit when things go well and shifting blame to Congress when things go poorly - Nicholson et al onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…
