Abstract
Less than 1 year after President Biden announced a sweeping plan to reduce – and in many cases eliminate – the student loan burden for the 46 million Americans who hold educational debt, the Supreme Court ruled the proposal unconstitutional in Biden v. Nebraska. Media accounts immediately speculated about whether the Court’s actions would spell trouble for the President’s reelection efforts, presuming that voters would punish Biden for a perceived policy failure. Despite, or perhaps because of, these concerns, the administration has continued to pursue student debt forgiveness through other means, and highlighting these efforts has been a key component of the president’s re-election strategy. Prior research suggests that Democrats, and the president in particular, stand to benefit electorally from pursuing student debt relief. But did the Supreme Court’s decision to block the president’s plan change who voters hold accountable for the problem of student loan debt? And to what extent is the issue motivating voters from different constituencies in 2024? This study leverages insights from an original survey experiment fielded in August 2023 to explore the dynamics of blame attribution for federal student debt cancellation efforts. We find that, contrary to media speculation, voters place much greater blame on the Supreme Court and congressional Republicans for the problem of student debt, while President Biden receives relatively little blame. We consider the implications of these findings for the short-term electoral politics of student debt relief policy as well as the increasingly salient politics of debt relief more broadly.
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© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- The Forum: Spring 2024 Issue
- Articles
- Affluence and the Demand-side for Policy Improvements: Exploring Elite Beliefs About Vulnerability to Societal Problems
- The Post-Brown Era in Judicial Policymaking
- Blame, Policy Feedback, and the Politics of Student Debt Relief Policy
- The Nationalized Politics of Police Reform
- Inside the “Administrative State”: The Enigmatic Office for Civil Rights
- How Ideological Diversity Moderates Republican Support for Voter Suppression Measures: The Cases of Georgia and Alabama
- Ten Years Later: How Water Crises in Flint and Detroit Transformed the Politics of U.S. Water Policy
- Climate Change Policy Development: A Multiple Streams Analysis of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022
- Book Review
- Steven Rogers: Accountability in State Legislatures
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- The Forum: Spring 2024 Issue
- Articles
- Affluence and the Demand-side for Policy Improvements: Exploring Elite Beliefs About Vulnerability to Societal Problems
- The Post-Brown Era in Judicial Policymaking
- Blame, Policy Feedback, and the Politics of Student Debt Relief Policy
- The Nationalized Politics of Police Reform
- Inside the “Administrative State”: The Enigmatic Office for Civil Rights
- How Ideological Diversity Moderates Republican Support for Voter Suppression Measures: The Cases of Georgia and Alabama
- Ten Years Later: How Water Crises in Flint and Detroit Transformed the Politics of U.S. Water Policy
- Climate Change Policy Development: A Multiple Streams Analysis of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022
- Book Review
- Steven Rogers: Accountability in State Legislatures