House Majority Party Leaders' Uses of Public Opinion Information

Abstract

Using archival and interview evidence, this article demonstrates that, in the 1980s and 1990s, House Democratic leaders made frequent and sophisticated use of polls to monitor trends in public opinion, to construct party images and "craft talk," and to strategically deploy favorable poll results to aid in legislative coalition building. Comparing this recovered history of Democratic Party leaders' poll use to House Republican leaders' poll use, this article suggests the value of relaxing principal-agent theory to better account for: 1) the multiple contextual factors that explain leadership behavior; and 2) leaders' efforts to shape the institutional contexts within which they act and the conditions that empower them.