Presidential leadership and American public opinion: An experimental approach to measuring the impact of going public on aggregate and group-level opinion

This research provides new insight into the relationship between the public addresses delivered by the American president and the resulting change in American public opinion measured by polling data. Building on scholarly consensus that modern presidential speeches have no substantive impact on subsequent presidential approval ratings, this study first replicates standard models of approval to include more recent administrations and a revised set of independent variables. After substantiating previous findings, this research justifies the need to pay more attention to alternative measures of the president's impact on American public opinion. Specifically, multiple analyses of an experimental dataset demonstrate that modern president's are able to improve public sentiments concerning their policy initiative approval and certain aspects of the president's personal characteristics. An equally important finding is that not all types of addresses yield the same impact. Finally, the American president is capable of using public addresses to change opinions held by core as well as non-core constituent groups.