The Effect of Political Trust in National Elections Under Unified and Divided Government

Abstract

Under what conditions is public distrust in government electorally consequential, and whom does it harm? The Republican Party appears to think that stoking the fire of public cynicism towards “Washington politicians” will benefit the party’s chances in the 2016 elections both for the White House and for Congress. Yet the academic literature is less clear. On the one hand, Hetherington (1999) and Hetherington and Rudolph (2015) suggest that individuals’ distrust in government reflects displeasure with the incumbent party in the White House. If voters go to the polls looking to hold the president’s party responsible for government’s lack of trustworthiness, the strategy of current GOP candidates may indeed be fruitful, given that Barack Obama is president. On the other hand, these electoral expectations seem a bit odd given that temporal variation in public trust in government is driven primarily by citizens’ attitudes towards Congress, not the president (e.g., Keele 2007). If voters go to the polls looking to hold the party that controls Congress responsible for government’s lack of trustworthiness, Republican efforts to foster distrust in government may backfire, given that their party currently presides over the legislative branch. In addition to these two alternative hypotheses, this study explores a third: that voters look to hold both branches of government responsible for governmental untrustworthiness. In this case, the effect of trust in elections will depend on whether party control of the two branches is unified or divided. Under unified government, distrust would be expected to harm the electoral prospects of the sole ruling party in both presidential and congressional races. Under divided government, voters would have to decide whether to hold neither party more responsible than the other, or hold the president’s party responsible in the presidential contest and the congressional majority party responsible in congressional races. No existing studies attempt to distinguish among these several hypotheses. Using individual level data, this study finds that distrust in government affects both presidential and congressional races. However, these effects are felt mainly during unified government, with candidates from the ruling party being held accountable in both congressional and presidential elections. The effects are much more muted during divided government, when responsibility is more evenly shared across both parties in both types of contests.