Table 7
Presidential Approval and Real Disposable Income Growth
Minimal Economic
Growth (-0.14%)
Maximum Economic
Growth (6.19%)
Difference
Global mean
55.9%
79.1%
23.2%
HS grads
56.9%
78.7%
21.8%
College grads
51.0%
81.2%
30.2%
Strong
Antipartisans
24.5%
32.2%
7.7%
Strong Partisans
83.8%
97.0%
13.2%
Turning now to our measures of production, clearly the most robust interactive
effect is the interaction between Landmark Legislation and education (consult Table 5 for
the coefficients and standard errors and Tables 8, 10 and 11 for predicted probabilities).
The mean presidential approval of more educated people is much more dependent on the
production of incredibly important legislation than is that of the less educated. The first
interpretation one could make of this finding is remarkable for its pessimism. Major
legislation (Bills Passed) is not important enough to get the attention of the average
person; even the most educated pay little attention to them (or are divided on the benefits
of the passage of such laws). Even when we turn to these incredibly important, rarely
passed bills (Landmark Legislation), it seems to take a college degree to get people to
notice these. In fact, the effect of these bills on presidential approval is more than double
among college graduates than among high school graduates. An alternate interpretation,
however, is that the college educated are simply more sensitive to their passage. Due to
the incredibly small coefficient on the main effect of education, college graduates are
essentially identical to high school students when 1 Landmark Law is passed (which is
close to the mean of 0.8). When the system fails to produce landmark legislation during a
29
Convention