This book is about politics in the United States. We examine the attitudes and behavior of American citizens. We study their evaluations of the president. We study their perceptions of the economy and the political responses that result. We study their party identifications. We study their policy views and ideological leanings. We study not only attitudes but also one important form of political action, the voting choices people make at the ballot box. And we don't study just ordinary citizens. We also study politicians and their responses to the voters – and the voters' responses to the politicians' actions.

These several topics will be familiar to readers who know the empirical literature on American politics of the post–World War II era. But our book diverges from the norm in one crucial respect. Our focus is on the macro rather than micro level of analysis.

For most studies of political behavior, the unit of analysis is the individual – the mass survey respondent or the member of some political elite. That is the study of “micro politics.” This book is about “macro politics,” not the politics of the individual but the politics of the aggregate – the “macro polity.” Here when we study citizens, the subject under investigation is the electorate rather than the voter. When we study elites, our subject is the institution rather than its members, or even the composite acts of the national government rather than its specific institutions.