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https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/which-political-victories-cause-backlash

Four years ago I wrote Trump: A Setback For Trumpism, pointing out that when Trump became president, his beliefs became much less popular. For example:

More recently we\\u2019ve seen what seems to me to be a similar phenomenon (source):

After a major conservative victory (the Supreme Court overturning Roe), Americans\\u2019 opinions shifted heavily in a pro-choice direction after a long period of stalemate. The change seems to be of about equal magnitude regardless of political affiliation:

In the original Trump post, I speculated that the effect might come from people\\u2019s dislike of Trump\\u2019s personality spreading to a dislike of his policies. I don\\u2019t think that can be true here - the abortion ruling was a straightforward policy change with no extra personality component.

One natural alternative theory is a thermostatic effect. Voters want some medium amount of abortion, so if they hear that pro-abortion forces are winning, they say they\\u2019re against abortion. But if they hear that anti-abortion forces are winning, they say they\\u2019re pro-abortion.

The problem is, I can\\u2019t really find this effect for recent Democratic victories. For example, in 2015 the Supreme Court ruled (in Obergefell) that gay marriage was legal. On a thermostatic picture, one might have expected the public to turn against gay marriage. Here\\u2019s the data (source):