Abstract :
Three aggregate measures of government support are commonly used in the study of the impact
of economic conditions on that support: survey measures of vote intention and approval of the
government/president, and electoral outcomes. The appeal of monthly time-series data over long
periods has attracted many analysts to the first two of these measures, collectively known as popularity
measures.Whether approval or vote intention is used, it is usually the same vote-based theories that are
being tested. Some academics argue that measures of vote intention and approval capture different
phenomena.1 And contextual factors, suggested by Bingham Powell and Guy Whitten, and Torsten
Persson and Guido Tabellini, that have been theorized to mitigate the effect of economic conditions on
vote intuitively will not have the equivalent effect on approval.2 Moreover, leading scholarship in the
United States points towards the fact that the economic considerations that matter for vote intention
are different from those for approval.3 In order to understand the consequences of using one measure
versus another in a model, this Note asks: what is the difference (if any) between government approval
and vote intention, why is there a difference, and when will it matter?
