A few weeks ago I theorized that Republican views of various things change dramatically depending on whether a Republican is in the White House. Their view of the economy brightens almost instantly. They approve of bombing campaigns. They suddenly decide the income tax they pay is pretty fair after all.
Democrats do the same thing, but Republicans do it more. Via Twitter, Evan Horowitz points me to another bit of evidence from Pew Research in favor of this theory:
Democrats are basically in the range of 20-40 percent regardless of who’s in the White House. Republicans range from 10-60 percent. Their trust in government plummeted nearly 50 points when Clinton and Obama won. Democrats stayed pretty stable when Reagan won and dropped only about 20 points when Bush won.
However, I have a couple of caveats. First, Republican loss of faith seems to begin in the last couple of years of a Republican presidency, either because they start to feel betrayed or because they sense doom around the corner. I’ve used a rolling average in my chart to smooth things out a bit, but the timeline looks the same if you don’t.
Second, nobody is bringing counter-examples to my attention. That might be because they don’t exist, or it might be because my readers aren’t looking for evidence of this sort.
Still, the evidence does seem to be surprisingly consistent: Republican voters are far angrier about a Democrat in the White House than Democrats are about a Republican in the White House. This probably explains a few things, but I’m not quite sure what yet.
