Gasoline prices and presidential approval ratings of the United States
Publication date
2025-03-04
Document type
Forschungsartikel
Author
Organisational unit
Scopus ID
Publisher
Sage Publications
Series or journal
American Politics Research
ISSN
Periodical volume
53
Periodical issue
5
First page
469
Last page
480
Is a version of
Peer-reviewed
✅
Part of the university bibliography
✅
Language
English
Keyword
forecasting
gasoline price
presidential approval ratings
random forests
Abstract
We use random forests, a machine-learning technique, to formally examine the link between real gasoline prices and presidential approval ratings of the United States (US). Random forests make it possible to study this link in a completely data-driven way, such that nonlinearities in the data can easily be detected and a large number of control variables, in line with the extant literature, can be considered. Our empirical findings show that the link between real gasoline prices and the presidential approval ratings is indeed nonlinear, and that the former even has predictive value in an out-of-sample exercise for the latter. We argue that our findings are in line with the so-called pocketbook mechanism, which stipulates that the presidential approval ratings depend on gasoline prices because the latter have sizable impact on personal economic situations of voters.
Description
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
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Published version
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