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⁴ In January 1986, the Social Democratic Party polled 42.5 per cent in the party barometer of Sifo, Sweden's leading polling institute. Within a few weeks, the party had increased its standing by 6 percentage points, one of the largest short-term increases ever recorded for a party in Sweden.

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¹² The second way takes into account a ‘ceiling effect’, which could limit the amount of attitude change a group could show. See Zeisel, Hans, Say It with Figures (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).Google Scholar That is, the Social Democrats already had very favourable attitudes towards Palme in 1985 so they were quite limited in the amount of attitude change they could show on this scale.

¹³ The three-year lagged correlations (measuring the same thing at two points in time) averaged 0.69 for political parties and 0.62 for party leaders in Sweden. These correlations tend to be somewhat higher for the Social Democratic party, Sweden's largest political party, and its leader. See Granberg, Donald and Holmberg, Sören, The Political System Matters: Social Psychology and Voting Behaviour in Sweden and the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

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¹⁷ The only comparable drop that has been documented in feeling thermometer ratings was the case of Gary Hart who was rated at 62.2 after a creditable though losing effort at winning the Democratic party's nomination in 1984. Then he got caught up in scandals regarding his personal life ending with a rating of 39.3 prior to the Super Tuesday primary election of 1988.

¹⁸ Of course, we recognize that Nixon himself undertook major efforts to change the way history would view him. However, this is not relevant for our testing of the critical event hypothesis. The effects of a truly critical event are not dependent upon the ceteris paribus condition.

¹⁹ If these ratings do not seem particularly high, it may be noted that they are higher than the ratings of the nominee of the Democratic party in 1972, George McGovern. Ratings of McGovern averaged 49.1 before the 1972 election and 45.6 after that election.

²⁰ Cf. Pollock, , ‘Issues, Values, and Critical Moments’.Google Scholar

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