ABSTRACT
Public opinion gets its influence because it moves election outcomes, and through them public policy. This chapter is about the electoral consequences of mood. It explores how mood alters outcomes of elections for the presidency and Congress. The chapter attempts to reformulate an old idea, that election results might sometimes be mandates for policy change. Election results are independent phenomena from the concept of policy mood. Mood is based upon policy preferences and nothing else. The US Constitution and two hundred years of convention establish presidential elections as state-by-state, winner-take-all contests. One of the oldest ideas about electoral politics, the notion of an election mandate—elections sending a message about voter preferences for what government should do—has taken a drubbing from voting and elections scholars. Policy mood is a measure of message. Married to election outcomes, it suggests clear-cut evidence that occasional elections in the modern era send messages from the governed to the governors.
