1. Jane Green and Will Jennings University of Manchester Measuring and Analysing Mood in Party and Government Competence Evaluations in the U.K. and U.S.A. Political Economy Seminar, Essex University, February 27, 2012

2.  What should the characteristics of party competence/ valence be at the aggregate-level?  What shapes party competence ratings? Do we need valence, if we have partisanship, economic indicators, economic evaluations, events and PM/Pres approval?  How might the explanation and the consequences of valence vary in different institutional settings?  Can - and should - valence be added to our understanding of the macro-polity? 2 Research Questions

3.  Valence and position issues (Stokes 1963)  Misnomer; issues change over time; it depends on framing  Policy handling questions largely ignored, until recently  Strong evidence that these are performance driven  Competence ratings are endogenous  Economic performance and evaluations  Prime Ministerial/Presidential approval  Party identification and bias  Competence ratings will exhibit common variance  Performance cues as information about trustworthiness  Salient performance cues as transferable information  Reinforced by cycles in government popularity (governing costs) Theorising about Valence at the Macro (and Micro) Level

4.  Data and Estimation of Mood in Competence  Macro-Competence UK and USA  Modeling Macro-Competence (UK)  Modeling Macro-Competence (US)  Effects on the Vote (UK and USA)  Implications and Conclusions

7.  Presidential approval and Prime Ministerial approval  Former: used as a short cut for approval of government handling  Latter: assumed to be concerned primarily with the individual  Time series of ‘government approval’ in UK  Continuous leader ratings for the opposition in the U.K.  Partisanship as an orienting heuristic for competence  Assume stronger in the U.S. in general, but important in both, especially given the difficulty in answering issue handling questions.  The role of parties and reputations for competence  Stronger in the U.K., where the opposition party can win or lose ‘competence’ by its actions, leader and emphasis, but important in U.S.  Party in government and party out of power  Analysis is focused upon parties in the U.K.  Strong emphasis on party in government (President) in the U.S.  Consideration of out-party as function of share of House Valence: U.S. & U.K.

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11.  U.K.  1950 – 2008: 2,383 items for party ‘best able to handle’ and relative handling questions  Gallup, Ipsos-Mori, Populus, YouGov, BES.  U.S.A.  1948 – 2010: 2,450 items for party ‘better job’ handling and general performance questions  Gallup, AP/Ipsos, ABC/Washington Post, NBC/Wall Street Journal, YouGov/Polimetrix, NES Data

12.  How much variance is shared with the latent dimension, smoothed for sampling error and sampling fluctuations.  A solution in circumstances where 85% of all possible values are missing and where the distribution of data is irregular over time (Stimson 2004).  Dyad comparisons for competence ratings, using a recursive metric, and an estimated weight for common variance of competence ratings with ‘mood’. Mood as a weighted moving average of past and future values

13. 54% common variation63% common variation

15. 67% common variation51% common variation

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20. Valence and Macro-Partisanship (UK) Granger Causation between macro-competence and macro-partisanship

21. Valence and Macro-Partisanship (USA) Granger Causation between macro-competence and macro-partisanship

22.  Granger GOV>OPP 22

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24.  Macro-competence declines with time in office, consistent with costs of governing.  Macro-competence is responsive to performance shocks: key events, economic shocks. These performance information effects transfer across policy issues [& validation].  There is systematic persistence in macro-competence, and significant effects for government control (Conservatives), leader ratings, macro-partisanship, economy (in government). Covariates explain between 23% and 32% variance in macro-competence.  Macro-competence is strongly robust in a model of vote intention and results in a 3-9% increase in R 2 on vote. 24

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26.  How quickly do shocks persist or dissipate?  If shocks to the reputation of parties due to good or bad performance last indefinitely, public opinion on valence is an integrated process, and if shocks dissipate quickly, it is stationary: determines the degree to which parties are forgiven for past mistakes and mismanagement.  Degree of fractional integration estimated with the Robinson (1995) multivariate semiparametric method, which calculates the value d for macro-competence: equal to 0.56 for the Governing party series and 0.71 for the Opposition, with the t- statistic indicating these values, as with the covariates, are significantly different from zero.  Fractionally difference the series to avoid spurious estimates.

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29. Macro-competence = Residuals: cointegrating regression (Valence)congressional approval share of House of Representatives congressional approval x House share presidential approval macro-partisanship consumer sentiment

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32. Congressional Ballot = Residuals: cointegrating regression congressional approval share of House of Representatives congressional approval x House share presidential approval macro-partisanship consumer sentiment valence residuals (gov) t-1 valence residuals (gov) t valence residuals (opp) t

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35.  Public opinion on party competence is consistent with a mood about valence in the U.S., (and in the U.K.).  Valence (macro-competence) is explained by existing performance variables; these variables (and the ECM) explain between 36% and 43% of variance in macro-competence.  Some evidence that valence is demonstrated in the legislature, for the party in power (as a function of House share).  In a very conservative estimate of the short-run effects of valence, this variable, macro-competence, explains 8-9% of variance in congressional approval (and 3-9% in the U.K.).  Macro-competence is important in the U.S., where it serves as an especially important series for the valence of the opposition; suggesting that the out-party can do relatively little to shape its competence, but its competence is highly important to the vote. 35 Summary

36. Jane Green and Will Jennings University of Manchester Measuring and Analysing Mood in Party and Government Competence Evaluations in the U.K. and U.S.A. Political Economy Seminar, Essex University, February 27, 2012

37.  Economic issues and valence  Macro-competence is not a product of economic questions (best party on the economy); these items compose a small proportion of each measure; including or excluding them makes no substantive difference; economic evaluations load onto the same dimension similarly to other policy issues.  Position issues and valence  Ratings on positional issues are still competence-based; they are not positively associated with public policy mood; they co-vary with other issues; their inclusion or exclusion makes no substantive difference to our results.  Public policy mood and valence  We are exploring the dynamics of thermostatic mood for another paper, but in all our models public policy mood is not simply a function of valence, or vice versa. Validity Considerations

38. Valence and Macro-Partisanship (USA) Granger Causation Tests between Valence and Macro-partisanship

39. Start: 1950 End: 2008 N=59

40. 40 ADL Model of Events on Macro-Competence (and persistence) Start 1979 Q3 End 2008 Q4 N=118

41. Start 1979 Q3 End 2008 Q4 N=118 An Error Correction Model of Macro-Competence

42. Start 1979 Q3 End 2008 Q4 N=118 An Error Correction Model of Vote Intention

45. Liberals macro-competence 70% common variation in all issue ratings