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Public opinion polls also affect how much money candidates receive in campaign donations. Donors assume public opinion polls are accurate enough to determine who the top two to three primary candidates will be, and they give money to those who do well. Candidates who poll at the bottom will have a hard time collecting donations, increasing the odds that they will continue to do poorly. This was apparent in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Bernie
Sanders , Hillary
Clinton , and Martin
O’Malley each campaigned in the hope of becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. In June 2015, 75 percent of Democrats likely to vote in their state primaries said they would vote for Clinton, while 15 percent of those polled said they would vote for Sanders. Only 2 percent said they would vote for O’Malley.
Patrick O’Connor. 2015. “WSJ/NBC Poll Finds Hillary Clinton in a Strong Position.”
Wall Street Journal . June 23, 2015. http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-poll-finds-hillary-clinton-tops-gop-presidential-rivals-1435012049. During this same period, Clinton raised $47 million in campaign donations, Sanders raised $15 million, and O’Malley raised $2 million.
Federal Elections Commission. 2015. “Presidential Receipts.” http://www.fec.gov/press/summaries/2016/tables/presidential/presreceipts_2015_q2.pdf (February 18, 2016). By September 2015, 23 percent of likely Democratic voters said they would vote for Sanders,
Susan Page and Paulina Firozi, “Poll: Hillary Clinton Still Leads Sanders and Biden But By Less,”
USA Today , 1 October 2015. and his summer fundraising total increased accordingly.
Dan Merica, and Jeff Zeleny. 2015. “Bernie Sanders Nearly Outraises Clinton, Each Post More Than $20 Million.”
CNN . October 1, 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/30/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-fundraising/index.html?eref=rss_politics (February 18, 2016).
Presidents running for reelection also must perform well in public opinion polls, and being in office may not provide an automatic advantage. Americans often think about both the future and the past when they decide which candidate to support.
Robert S. Erikson, Michael B. MacKuen, and James A. Stimson. 2000. “Bankers or Peasants Revisited: Economic Expectations and Presidential Approval.”
Electoral Studies 19: 295–312. They have three years of past information about the sitting president, so they can better predict what will happen if the incumbent is reelected. That makes it difficult for the president to mislead the electorate. Voters also want a future that is prosperous. Not only should the economy look good, but citizens want to know they will do well in that economy.
Erikson et al, “Bankers or Peasants Revisited: Economic Expectations and Presidential Approval. For this reason, daily public approval polls sometimes act as both a referendum of the president and a predictor of success.
The relationship between public opinion polls and government action is murkier than that between polls and elections. Like the news media and campaign staffers, members of the three branches of government are aware of public opinion. But do politicians use public opinion polls to guide their decisions and actions?
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