Governing Party Issue Ownership and How Citizens Assess Conditions

It is well-documented that Americans perceive conditions more favorably when their preferred party is in power. This study considers a second, more subtle, but potentially impactful partisan bias: that the governing party’s policy reputations lead voters to perceive better conditions on the issues it “owns.” In US politics, voters trust Democrats more on environmental, healthcare, education, and safety net issues while Republicans are favored on immigration, crime, defense, and keeping taxes low. In two studies, I observe whether these reputations also impact perceptions when each party is in power. First, I analyze hundreds of survey toplines from Gallup Trends, dating from 1956 to the present, about public perceptions on a variety of party-owned policy areas. Second, to leverage greater variation in control of subnational government, I analyze seven surveys that ask about state-level conditions as well. While results from the former analysis are only suggestive, both approaches point toward an association between the governing party and how citizens assess conditions on the issues it owns.