Prime Ministerial Popularity in the UK: 1960–81
| Author | John Hudson |
| Published date | 01 March 1984 |
| Date | 01 March 1984 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1984.tb00167.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Political
Studies
(1984),
XXXII,
86-91
Prime Ministerial Popularity in
the
UK:
1960-81
JOHN
HUDSON
University
of
Bath
The past decade has seen the growth of a considerable literature upon the link
between government popularity, as measured by the public opinion polls, and
the state
of
the economy, as measured by certain key variables. This work had
its roots in work done in the early
1970s
by Goodhart and Bhansali,’ Mueller*
and Kramer-’ and developed steadily throughout the decade, culminating in an
excellent set
of
readings edited by Hibbs and Fa~sbender.~ In this paper I shall
be looking at an aspect within this general area that has received relatively little
attention, that of the personal popularity
of
the prime minister.
A brief discussion of this, together with some statistical analysis, can be
found in the excellent early study by Goodhart and Bhan~ali.~ In this they find,
not too surprisingly, that both the popularity
of
the government and prime
minister are swayed by the same factors. More interestingly they
go
on to
conclude that if the leader
of
a party became significantly more popular then
his party would benefit marginally. More specifically, for every
10
point surge
in a leader’s popularity, his own party might pick up a 1.5 per cent increase in
popularity. However, they then go on to qualify this with a warning of the
difficulties involved in isolating the independent influence of the leader on his
party and the hope that improved statistical techniques might reduce these
difficulties.
In this present paper these conclusions will be re-examined. The first task
will be to look more closely at the measure
of
prime ministerial popularity
used. The measure they employ tends to follow the performance of
a
govern-
ment rather closely. When evaluations of that performance are high, so
is
prime ministerial popularity. This makes it rather difficult, as Goodhart and
Bhansali pointed out, to determine the independent influence that the person-
ality of an individual prime minister might have upon hidher government’s
popularity. Thus, an attempt
will
be made to extract from this measure of
popularity one which relates more specifically to the inherent qualities and
1
C.
A.
E.
Goodhart and
R.
J.
Bhansali, ‘Political Economy’,
PolificalStudies,
18 (1970).
2
J.
Mueller, ‘Presidential Popularity from Truman
to
Johnson’,
American Polifical Science
3
G.
H. Kramer, ‘Short Term Fluctuations
in
U.S. Voting Behavior 1896--l964’,
American
4 D.
A.
Hibbs
Jnr.
and H. Fassbender (eds),
Contemporary Political
Economy
(Amsterdam,
5
Goodhart and Bhansali, ‘Political Economy’, pp. 68-81.
Review,
64(1970).
Political ScienceReview,
65
(1971).
North Holland, 1981).
0032-3217/84/01/0086-12/$03.00
0
1984
Political Studies
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