Talking About Congress: The Limited Effect of Congressional Advertising on Congressional Approval

49 Pages Posted: 12 Dec 2014

See all articles by Krista Loose

Krista Loose

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Date Written: September 2, 2014

Abstract

Public opinion of Congress is historically low: approximately 15 percent expressed approval of the job Congress is doing in the latest Gallup poll (Jones 2014). While political science research has shed light on a variety of causes (Durr, Gilmour and Wolbrecht 1997; Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 1995; Ramirez 2009) and consequences (Jones and McDermott 2009; Lipinski 2004; Wolak 2007) of low congressional approval, many open questions remain. One classical explanation for the public's attitude is that members of Congress are critical of their own institution. Indeed, Fenno's (1978) classic statement that politicians run for Congress by running against Congress has long been taken as fact by both political scientists and practitioners. However, neither the actions of congressmen nor the public's reactions to such statements have been empirically tested in a thorough manner. This study combines new data on congressional advertising during the 2000s with survey data from the same period to speak directly to Fenno's conjectures. I find that candidates only mention Congress in approximately 9 percent of their advertisements, and many do so in a neutral way. Moreover, there do not appear to be strong or long-lasting effects on congressional approval as a result of such critical ads. These observational results are born out by an experiment where I show subjects one of three mock advertisements: one critical of Congress, one supportive of Congress, and one that does not mention Congress. Subjects viewing the ad supportive of Congress were less likely to support the ad sponsor relative to the control ad, but there were no effects of either treatment on respondent's attitudes toward Congress.

Keywords: Congress, advertising, approval, public opinion

Suggested Citation

Loose, Krista, Talking About Congress: The Limited Effect of Congressional Advertising on Congressional Approval (September 2, 2014). MIT Political Science Department Research Paper No. 2014-30, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2536996 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2536996

Krista Loose (Contact Author)

affiliation not provided to SSRN

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