What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymmetric Misperceptions [pdf]
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Re: What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymmetric Misperceptions [pdf]
#2Author here. Not sure why this is showing up today but happy to answer questions!
FWIW, we have data from 2014 across many more issues and the basic story is the same. Haven't finished writing that up.
Re: What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymmetric Misperceptions [pdf]
#3The CIA always bets on public opinion and extorts and destroys people.
I laugh my ass off because God's gonna fuck you so hard.
Re: What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymmetric Misperceptions [pdf]
#4It's always struck me that conservatives expect to be listened to in the US while liberals expect to be ignored.
Re: What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymmetric Misperceptions [pdf]
#5Author here. Not sure why this is showing up today but happy to answer questions! FWIW, we have data from 2014 across many more issues and the basic story is the same. Haven't finished writing that up.
Any chance you have a single-spaced copy?
Re: What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymmetric Misperceptions [pdf]
#6This might be an off topic question, but how do the results change (if at all) when accounting for the age of the people involved?
That is, how do politicians do at predicting the opinions of people +/- 5 years of their own age (which may be different than the total for the district)?
I've always been curious if politicians are just "behind the times" (due to an average age higher than the average age of constituents), leading to systemically conservative views.
Re: What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymmetric Misperceptions [pdf]
#7The best quote of the paper (pg 23):
>Interestingly, the reason we uncover such striking misperceptions does not appear to be that politicians are reluctant to admit a belief that public opinion is not on their side – many do. Rather, it seems that the reality of where the public stands on these issues has such a weak influence on politicians’ perceptions of public opinion that two candidates coming to judgments about the same constituents largely fail to have much more in common than would two candidates picked entirely at random
Basically, it is not that politicians intentionally mis-believe what their constituents support (willful ignorance, etc), the problem is that politicians are a poor representation of their constituents in general.
I've long maintained congress would be much more representative if eligible citizens were randomly selected for 1 congressional term, like jurors are in juries.
Re: What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymmetric Misperceptions [pdf]
#8It's always struck me that conservatives expect to be listened to in the US while liberals expect to be ignored.
Conservativism is born of ambiguity intolerance. One of the defining characteristics of ambiguity intolerance is a need for certainty.
As for why liberals expect to be ignored? I'd reckon that has more to do with history and a general sense of malaise and pessimism toward our intractable situation.
Re: What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymmetric Misperceptions [pdf]
#9The best quote of the paper (pg 23): > Interestingly, the reason we uncover such striking misperceptions does not appear to be that politicians are reluctant to admit a belief that public opinion is not on their side – many do. Rather, it seems that the reality of where the public stands on these issues has such a weak influence on politicians’ perceptions of public opinion that two candidates coming to judgments abo…
>I've long maintained congress would be much more representative if eligible citizens were randomly selected for 1 term.
This is the way government worked in ancient Greece (or rather, Athens, but other Greece city-states copied the model).
Re: What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymmetric Misperceptions [pdf]
#10Author here. Not sure why this is showing up today but happy to answer questions! FWIW, we have data from 2014 across many more issues and the basic story is the same. Haven't finished writing that up.
Amazing paper. Thanks so much for contributing this work. I work in civic tech and am very focused on trying to improve the gov system we have through technology. Are there any representatives you have seen recently that are doing a particularly good job gauging the pulse of their constituents? AND/OR is there an ideal scenario you have imagined that is left out of the paper?
As an aside, as someone who has started one company in the space of citizen engagement and been in product exec roles at two others, I wonder whether or not rep engagement with constituents is a problem that can be solved with technology or if it is cultural in nature and requires more individual leadership to right the ship. I have met with a large number of reps from city, state and federal levels in order to build an understanding of the strategic problems that are top of mind for them. I have found (generally) that much more effort is paid in "dealing" with inbound messages and heading off harsh judgement in the court of public opinion than procuring good data.
TL;DR tech is important but far from a panacea and something reps don't really think about.