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Public Opinion Quarterly Advance Access originally published online on November 13, 2008
Public Opinion Quarterly 2008 72(4):619-650; doi:10.1093/poq/nfn055
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Joining and Leaving the Rally

Understanding the Surge and Decline in Presidential Approval Following 9/11

Cindy D. Kam and Jennifer M. Ramos

Address correspondence to Cindy D. Kam; e-mail: cindy.d.kam{at}vanderbilt.edu.

This paper explains the surge and decline of presidential approval following rally events. We develop a theoretical framework grounded in psychology and political entrepreneurship to explain not only who joins and leaves the rally, but why. We argue that threatening events such as 9/11 heighten the link between national identity and presidential approval, but this link fades as political entrepreneurs make partisan identities more salient. We find support for these propositions using analysis of pooled cross-sectional survey datasets and content analysis of elite discourse.

CINDY D. KAM is with the Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, VU Station B #351817, Nashville, TN 37235-1817, USA. JENNIFER M. RAMOS is with the Department of Political Science, Loyola Marymount University, 1 LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90045, USA. A previous version of this paper was originally presented at the 2004 Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association. We owe special thanks to David Greenwald for his contribution to the initial development of the ideas presented here. We are also grateful to James Fowler, Scott Gartner, Hannah Goble, John Mueller, Donald Rothchild, Elizabeth Zechmeister, participants at the National Election Studies Fellows Workshop, and our colleagues at the Department of Political Science at UC Davis for useful advice. We thank Kevin Cullinan, Chelsea Stoy, Christine Vahramian, and Lauren Winfield for research assistance. All errors remain our own.


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