Expanding the Measure of Congruency: Presidential Anticipation of Public Preferences, 1953-2001

Abstract

Several important studies have examined congruency between presidential policy position taking and public opinion. Much of this policy-public opinion scholarship, however, explores reflexive responsive pathways between representative and represented, where presidents read public opinion and respond to the opinions of the known public. A less explored aspect of presidential responsiveness to public opinion is the idea of presidential anticipation of future public opinion similar to Key’s (1964) concept of latent opinion. In this article, we offer a simple measure of anticipatory public opinion. Confirming what Key speculated about latent opinion, we find that presidents are more likely to successfully anticipate public preferences when the issue is salient and when elections are approaching, whereas popularity matters very little. Based upon these findings, presidents tend to look outward at the future political environment they face rather than inward (at current popularity) in anticipating reactions to new policy agendas.