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Congressional Support For the President: the View From the Kennedy/Johnson White House
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Congressional Support For the President: the View From the Kennedy/Johnson White House

Cary R Covington
The Journal of Politics, Vol.48(3), pp.717-728
08/1986
DOI: 10.2307/2131174
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Congressional Support For the President: the View From the Kenned714.43 kBDownloadView
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https://doi.org/10.2307/2131174View
Published (Version of record)The Journal of Politics, 48:3 (1986) pp. 717-728.

Abstract

This paper describes characteristics of presidential support scores compiled by the Office of Congressional Relations (OCR) from 1961 to 1967. These characteristics are compared to similar scores compiled by Congressional Quarterly (CQ). The OCR scores were based on votes known to be important to the presidents, while CQ could not make such distinctions. This difference in vote selection generated important substantive and methodological implications. For example, the OCR scores reveal that Republicans and southern Democrats were much less supportive of the presidents than CQ suggests, while northern Democrats were much more supportive. This, along with other CQ shortcomings revealed by the analysis of CQ-OCR differences, argues for the use of the OCR scores when attempting to explain presidential influence, and a sensitivity to important problems with the CQ scores when the OCR data are not available.
Political Science

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