The Impact of Presidential Association on Supreme Court Approval

• In Event: Causes and Consequences of Public Support for the Supreme Court

Abstract

During the waning years of the Obama presidency, after the Court’s landmark same-sex marriage ruling, Supreme Court approval among Republicans reached a low of just 18% while it skyrocketed to 76% among Democrats. However, in the immediate aftermath of President Trump's election victory and his subsequent appointment of Justice Gorsuch, a massive flip occurred: Republican approval of the Supreme Court rose sharply to 65% while Democratic approval sank to just 40%. A similar trend has occurred during party transitions since 2000. Do citizens really associate the Supreme Court that closely with the president in power? Or do landmark rulings--in conjunction with partisan/policy alignment--exhibit a greater impact on Supreme Court approval and associated partisan flips? Two mechanisms serve as foundations for the "presidential association" hypothesis. First, when the party of the president changes, people may anticipate that the new president will be able to appoint justices in his or her image and that drives up approval among co-partisans and drives down approval for out-partisans. Second, people may retroactively react to actual presidential appointments of like-minded justices, whereby co-partisans perceive that the Court moved in the direction of the president's party (even though it may not have) and out-partisans perceive the reverse. Research shows that Supreme Court rulings have small to null aggregate effects on public opinion, but instead that they can polarize opinion on the basis of partisanship (or other factors). We test that hypothesis against the presidential association hypotheses during a particularly polarized time (2000-2018) where partisan cues arguably have more bite.

To test these hypotheses, we leverage public opinion polls from Gallup, Pew, and The American Panel Survey (TAPS) before and after key Supreme Court rulings, presidential transitions, and Supreme Court appointments to test which of these events moves approval most substantially among Republicans and Democrats—and which events are capable of flipping the direction of approval between Democrats and Republicans most substantially. We also conduct a deeper panel analysis (using TAPS data) of the transition between Obama and Trump to test whether the mere transition of power or the appointment of Justice Gorsuch has a stronger impact on partisan reversals in approval. As more research shows that approval of the Court’s outputs can have implications for Supreme Court legitimacy, this research tests important mechanisms by which the president can exhibit an impact on that overarching support by either merely winning the White House or by appointing like-minded justices.

Authors

• Brandon L. Bartels, George Washington University

• Jessica James, The George Washington University