| Summary: | 碩士 === 東吳大學 === 政治學系 === 99 === In presidential democracies, presidential approval rating has been getting more and more attentions from media and scholars. This indicates the importance of approval rating because it not only reflects people’s perception toward the president’s performance, but also relates to whether government policies can be successfully promoted and whether the president can win reelections. For those who care about presidential approval rating, including the government itself and researchers, the evaluation of presidential performance is not the only thing they need to know, they also need to learn the factors behind people’s rating.
This paper adapts pooled cross-sectional analysis, utilizing both micro and macro data to discuss factors that might affect presidential approval rating in Taiwan. The study covers the time period from 2000-2010, and includes two presidents from different parties, one of which re-elected in 2004. By using survey data spanning a period of ten years, we are able to understand the factors that affect presidential approval rating and whether there is a difference before and after the re-election. Also, we will be able to see if the same factors exert different impacts on different presidents. Furthermore, this study uses content analysis on media reports of the president to scrutinize whether these reports shape people’s perceptions on president’s performances and approval rating.
The study found that time, social and political events, domestic economy, media exposure of the president, contents of media reports, and whether people possess the same partisan inclination with the president all have impact on presidential approval rating.
In addition, this paper attempts to examine how presidential approval rating affects Taiwanese politics. By examining the influence of approval rating at the individual level, I found that people satisfy with the president’s performance would either vote for the president in the re-election or support the presidential candidate who comes from the same party as the president. However, at the aggregate level, presidential approval rating has no significant impact on party’s vote share, neither on national elections nor local elections.
To understand the impact of presidential approval rating more clearly, we need to accumulate more data and materials so that we would be able to find more factors that might affect the way people evaluate the president’s performance. And then we could analyze the relationship between presidential approval rating and election outcome in a more comprehensive way.
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