Effects of the Draft on U.S. Presidential Approval Ratings During the Vietnam War, 1954-1975

摘要

A gap exists in understanding and modeling the Vietnam War era for lack of qualitative studies into the political effect of the military draft. Using presidential approval ratings as a proxy assessment of the country's well- being and political strength, this work seeks to fill the void by evaluating the effects of the Vietnam-era draft on presidential approval between 1954 and 1975. With a basis in rational theory, it uses Autoregressive Moving Average time series analysis, both univariate and multivariate, in a quasi-experimental design to detect significant changes. Further, it employs Granger Causality Testing to evaluate the degree and directionality of causation for those independent time series found to have a significant relationship with approval. The study finds both direct and indirect effects of the draft upon presidential approval that vary by period. The draft shifts from having no impact on aggregated approval ratings to a negative impact as the conflict mounts. This suggests public resistance grew as conflict costs increased. Following the end of the draft, mixed results occur with significance shown for both monthly and cumulative draft series. The monthly series demonstrates a positive effect on approval while the cumulative series continues to demonstrate a negative effect. It is postulated that these divergent results indicate an immediate positive response to the end of the draft while the residual negative effects still lingered. Finally, analysis of the results from the overall period shows a significant, positive effect.