Public Opinion Quarterly Advance Access originally published online on August 10, 2007
Public Opinion Quarterly 2007 71(3):349-366; doi:10.1093/poq/nfm020
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Testing the Permanence of the Permanent Campaign
An Analysis of Presidential Polling Expenditures, 1977–2002
Address correspondence to James A. McCann; e-mail: mccannj{at}purdue.edu.
Many presidential observers argue that the modern White House is the site of more-or-less permanent campaigning. In a recent POQ piece, Murray and Howard (2002) [Public Opinion Quarterly 66:527–558] explore one indicator of the "permanent campaign," the extent to which Presidents Carter, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, and Clinton commissioned independent opinion polls and focus groups to assist in policymaking and political maneuvering. Murray and Howard suggest that while a sophisticated polling operation has been institutionalized in the White House, there is substantial variation in how much a president uses this operation. In this article, we model presidential polling expenditures over time using monthly figures. We find that presidents do not vary significantly in the average amount spent per month on polls. There are, however, two recurring patterns of variation within presidential administrations: Presidents tend to spend significantly more on internal polling during the most intense months of a presidential reelection campaign; and polling expenditures increase over the course of each presidential term. These findings suggest that there are common forces (e.g., elections, natural decline in support) that have driven all presidents since Ford to poll.
KATHRYN DUNN TENPAS is the Director of the University of Pennsylvania Washington Semester Program, 1608 Rhode Island Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036, USA. JAMES A. MCCANN is Professor of Political Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2004 meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL. We thank Sarah Binder, Tom Mann, Anthony King, Brandon Rottinghaus and the POQ reviewers for helpful advice. In addition, we are indebted to Andrew Furlow, Sarah Taylor, and, especially, Emily Charnock for research assistance. Tenpas would like to thank the Weidenbaum Center at Washington University in St. Louis for providing support during the academic years 2004–2005. The authors are solely responsible for the analyses and interpretations presented here. Replication data files are available upon request.
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