Trump Success? Conventional Measures in the Era of an Unconventional President Jon R. Bond Texas A&M University
[email protected] and Manny Teodoro Texas A&M University
[email protected] Prepared for Presentation at the 115th Annual Meeting & Exhibition of the American Political Science Association August 29 – September 1, 2019 Washington, DC Trump Success? Conventional Measures in the Era of an Unconventional President Abstract Conventional indicators reported in CQ’s 2017 Presidential Support Study show that President Trump racked up a “Record Success Rate”, winning 100 percent of House votes on which he expressed a position. Although presidency scholars have long recognized that winning roll call votes is not an indication of presidential influence, Trump’s unconventional style and his willful ignorance of Congress and basic details of the policies he “supports” lead us to question whether the results of roll call votes should even be interpreted as presidential success. Including this unconventional president in the study of a still small n of presidents requires innovative indicators that do not rely exclusively on traditional Presidential Support Scores that compare members on a static zero to 100 scale. Taking cues from FiveThirtyEight and from the field of sabermetrics, this paper presents two novel metrics that estimate whether House members’ support for the 11 elected presidents from Eisenhower to Trump is higher or lower than should be expected relative to differing political conditions. One metric, Support Above Expectations (SAE), estimates whether members’ presidential support is higher or lower than should be expected given electoral conditions, partisanship, polarization. This metric builds on 538’s “Trump plus-minus” score.