Politicians' Reading of Public Opinion and its Biases
Abstract
Politicians care a lot about public opinion, they put great effort into getting to know what the people want. They almost constantly assess public opinion through a large variety of sources. And although most of them define themselves as trustees, in their actual day-to-day decision-making almost all politicians behave as delegates in the sense that they hardly ever deliberately cross public opinion but act in line with it (or act not at all). Notwithstanding their great focus on public opinion, politicians’ perceptions of what it is that the people want are remarkably inaccurate. They not only misjudge the share of people supporting specific policies, they also quite often position the majority on the wrong side of the debate. Their perceptions of public opinion are not only inaccurate, but most of the time biased as well. Politicians perceive the public to hold more right-wing positions than it actually does. Together, the inaccuracy and bias of politicians’ public opinion perceptions challenge the idea that elected representatives make representative democracy work by relying on their public opinion perceptions. In Flanders (in Belgium), the political system this book looks at, politicians do everything within their power to understand citizens’ preferences, but they do not always succeed in acting responsively because of their mistaken perceptions.
... For this second path to work, politicians must have an accurate understanding of the public's desires. Even though politicians go to great lengths to learn about the public's preferences (Soontjens and Walgrave, 2021;Walgrave et al., 2023b), their understanding of public opinion is frequently inaccurate (e.g., Broockman and Skovron, 2018;Holmberg, 2003;Pereira, 2021;Pilet et al., 2023;Walgrave et al., 2023a). One recent study that draws on data from four countries finds that politicians do not have a significantly more accurate understanding of public opinion than ordinary citizens do (Walgrave et al., 2023a). ...
... Recently, scholars have revived their interest in measuring politicians' 'perceptual accuracy' (Broockman and Skovron, 2018;Kübler, 2024;Pereira, 2021;Pilet et al., 2023;Walgrave et al., 2023a), as in their ability to accurately estimate the preferences of the public. These studies have shown that politicians are generally rather poor at estimating public opinion (Walgrave et al., 2023b) and frequently estimate public opinion to be more right-wing than it actually is (Broockman and Skovron, 2018;Pilet et al., 2023). Yet, we still know little about why politicians make more accurate estimations on certain positions, except that politicians have an easier time gauging unipolar public opinion signals (Clausen et al., 1983). ...
... Within the recent revival of interest in perceptual accuracy, most of these have been tested empirically. See, for example, Pereira (2021) and Sevenans et al. (2023) on how projection affects politicians' estimations (cognitive balance), or Walgrave et al. (2023b) on whether more senior politicians hold more accurate public opinion perceptions (personality characteristics). However, the main contextual variable identified by Clausen-issue salience-has so far received little attention. ...
Politicians’ perceptions of public opinion matter for substantive representation, but previous work has concluded that they do not have very accurate perceptions of voters’ policy preferences. We add to the debate on the drivers of perceptual accuracy by exploring whether politicians have a more accurate understanding of public opinion when it matters either to voters or themselves, or when politicians think it matters more to voters. Drawing on survey data collected among elected representatives and citizens in Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, and Germany, we show that politicians have a better understanding of public opinion when they think the issue matters to voters. Further, when an issue is personally important to politicians they more accurately estimate their party supporters’ opinions. The results confirm that politicians hold more accurate perceptions of voters’ preferences when they think it is important to do so, but not necessarily when the issues actually are important to voters.
... However, responsiveness is unlikely if policymakers lack accurate perceptions of public opinion. Research conducted in the United States and other countries suggests that policymakers in fact have biased perceptions of public attitudes and needs (Bergan & Fitzpatrick, 2021;Broockman & Skovron, 2018;Hertel-Fernandez et al., 2019;Varone & Helfer, 2022;Walgrave et al., 2022. ...
... According to this perspective, policymakers have limited resources, including limited time and cognitive resources, and do not expend those resources to form accurate perceptions of public opinion (Herbst, 1998;Kalla & Porter, 2021;Miler, 2007). Policymakers rely on interactions with members of the public as an indicator of public opinion rather than more extensive, costly measures such as public opinion polling (Herbst, 1998;Miler, 2007;Walgrave et al., 2022. Additionally, policymakers encounter biased samples of the public, as they may be more likely to communicate with groups who make campaign contributions (Kalla & Broockman, 2016) or with people with certain racial, ideological, and/or partisan profiles due to biases in contacting behavior (Bergan & Cole, 2015;Broockman, 2014;Broockman & Skovron, 2018). ...
... For example, Baekgaard and colleagues (2019) find that policymakers, when interpreting hypothetical evidence about public versus private providers of a good, tend to be biased in interpreting the evidence as favoring their ideological predispositions. Second, as discussed above, many studies have provided evidence of policymakers' bias in interpreting public opinion (Broockman & Skovron, 2018;Hertel-Fernandez et al., 2019;Varone & Helfer, 2022;Walgrave et al., 2022. Although a prominent explanation of this bias stems from biases in the samples of people who contact their elected official, discounting the opinions of constituents with whom policymakers disagree could be another source of bias (Butler & Dynes, 2016). ...
In experimental work, researchers have found that policymakers discount the opinions of constituents with whom they disagree. We build on these results with a national sample of local policymakers in the United States, exploring whether communicators can prevent policymakers from discounting their opinions by providing evidence of their own knowledge about a topic. We find that policymakers discount the opinions of hypothetical constituents with whom they disagree, but there is evidence that providing unambiguous evidence about a letter-writer’s positive traits can reduce this discounting. We conclude with a discussion of implications for theory as well as practical implications for communicating with policymakers.
... Until recently, only few empirical studies attempted to evaluate whether politicians hold accurate perceptions of what voters want (Belchior, 2014;Clausen, 1977;Clausen et al., 1983;Converse & Pierce, 1986;Hedlund & Friesema, 1972;Holmberg, 1999). In recent years, however, the topic has received renewed interest (see, Broockman & Skovron, 2018;Kalla & Porter, 2021;Walgrave et al., 2022Walgrave et al., , 2023. These studies uncover several important empirical regularities. ...
... In all political systems, politicians are incentivized to learn about what voters want and to act accordingly, and in all systems electoral incentives play a role. For instance, in a recent study, Walgrave et al. (2022) showed that Belgian politiciansin a system with very strong parties-go to great lengths to assess public opinion and try very hard to get their individual perceptions right because they believe this is a precondition for their responsiveness and, ultimately, for their individual electoral success. Yet, the dual path applies in a slightly different guise to countries with different systems. ...
Political representation can be described as a process brought about via an electoral and a perceptual path. Drawing on original survey data on the perceptual accuracy of elected representatives in Belgium, Canada and Switzerland, this study explores whether and how the two paths are connected. It shows, first, that representatives who more accurately perceive voters' opinion are more likely to be re‐elected, suggesting that perceptual accuracy impacts the electoral path to representation. Second, representatives who are electorally safe hold less accurate perceptions of voters' policy preferences, meaning that the electoral path impacts the perceptual path. In all, the study provides evidence for the role of politicians' perceptual accuracy in their electoral career: voters sanction those representatives who are not sufficiently acquainted with their preferences, and representatives who fear to be voted out of office put more effort in getting acquainted with what voters want.
... However, the situation that conscientious representatives are facing is quite different if they know that their party voters hold policy preferences that are at odds with those of the party's representatives, e.g. through increased constituency work (see Kingdon, 1968Kingdon, , 1984Walgrave et al., 2022a). We expect constituency work to provide information about the extent to which voters agree with the party's position. ...
... Therefore, we argue that this sensitive information about a low voter-party congruence will strongly moderate their loyalty to the party (Hypothesis 2). This expectation needs some clarification since the literature on the perceptual accuracy of elected politicians shows that representatives are not very good at estimating the policy preferences of the general population and of their own party voters (Walgrave et al., 2022a). However, one can reasonably assume that politicians investing more time in constituency work (Fenno, 1977) will be more frequently in contact with their constituency and, thus, more able to accurately guess the policy positions of their party voters. ...
Party unity is an important feature in contemporary democracies. Ideological loyalty, disciplinary measures implemented by party leaders and homogeneity of preferences among elected representatives lead them to act in unison. This study focuses on the last mechanism and assesses under which conditions party representatives agree on policy positions. It argues that the personality trait of conscientiousness is linked to how a representative agrees with her party's position and that this relationship is moderated by her knowledge of dissent between party voters and representatives. This study use data from a comparative survey conducted among 866 representatives in Belgium, Canada, Germany and Switzerland, and among the party constituencies in the four countries. Results show that conscientious representatives are more likely to differ significantly from the position of their party peers if they spend more time on constituency work and if their voters' preferences are not congruent with those of their fellow representatives.
... Specifically, the study of politicians' perceptions focuses on substantive representation, which puts the focus on the actions taken by representatives 'on behalf' and 'in the interest' of the represented (Pitkin, 1967, p., 112-14). Perceptions of public opinion are crucial for substantive representation for several reasons (see Walgrave et al., 2022). First, politicians must understand voters' interests and preferences to be genuinely responsive to them. ...
A growing body of literature shows that the preferences of poorer groups in society are less well represented than the preferences of the rich. This paper scrutinises one possible explanation of inequality in representation: that politicians hold biased perceptions of what citizens want. We conducted surveys with citizens and politicians in four countries: Belgium, Switzerland, Canada and Germany. Citizens provided their preferences regarding concrete policy proposals, and then politicians estimated these preferences. Comparing politicians’ estimates with the actual preferences of different social groups, the paper shows that politicians’ perceptions are closer to the preferences of the richer than to those of poorer people for issues that matter most for economic inequality: socio‐economic issues. Further, we find that especially right‐wing politicians tend to think about the preferences of richer societal groups when estimating the preferences of their partisan electorates on socio‐economic matters.
... However, public opinion can only be heard when it is expressed. While media, and most existing research on responsiveness, focus on opinion polls, politicians listen to the public in many different ways (Hooghe and Marien 2012;Walgrave, Soontjens & Sevenans, 2022). For 3 individuals, letters are a relatively easy way to express their opinion. ...
... There is a well-established and substantial link between public opinion and public policy (for an overview, see Burnstein, 2003). The support for this general link comes from various sources: studies comparing public polls with later policymaking (Monroe, 1998), interviews with politicians (see Walgrave et al., 2022), citizen resistance and ensuing changes in planned legislation (Park & Ham, 2022), and survey experiments with politicians as participants (e.g., Sevenans, 2021). When an issue is salient, the impact of public opinion is further enhanced (Burnstein, 2003). ...
Governmental responses to the frequently occurring terrorist hostage-takings, in which authorities must weigh the lives of the hostages against the lives of potential future victims, depend on popular support for governmental policy. Yet, little is known about how people form their judgement of governmental policies in this moral dilemma. We argue that people typically have imperfect information and their policy support for concessions can be substantially altered by changing the information they possess about different consequences. Across three studies (overall N = 1,547) employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, we found that (a) support for concessions is negatively linked to age and political conservatism, (b) most people either focus only on one aspect or have an imperfect representation of this moral dilemma when thinking about their support for concessions, (c) providing information on the benefits of concessions increases support for concessions, and (d) support for concessions increases when the benefits outweigh the costs and when a salient moral norm prescribes concessions. The potential implications for policymakers are discussed.
... Foyle (1997), in turn, emphasises that the beliefs of leaders about the value and significance of public opinion are crucial in determining how much influence public opinion actually has. Walgrave et al. (2022) argue that politicians invest enormously in reading public opinion, but they are likely to perceive the public as holding more rightwing opinions than they actually do. The bottom-up view often regards public opinion as being influential when it reflected liberal values and norms whereas the rally-around-the-flag phenomenon is seen as more jingoistic. ...
Finland's decision to apply for membership in NATO is a case of bottom‐up driven foreign policy. Public opinion had been rather stable for more than 25 years in the NATO issue with less than 30 per cent of the people supporting Finland's membership in NATO but almost overnight during the week when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, a majority of Finns were in favour of it. Only after that shift in public opinion did the decision‐makers support the idea of joining NATO. How was the bottom‐up driven change possible? First, the resistance to NATO membership in Finland was common but not deep. Second, in the run‐up to the war, Russia had demanded that NATO put a stop to its open door policy not only with regard to Ukraine but also for Finland. Third, Russia's unprovoked war on Ukraine constituted a particular frame in Finland, because the 1939 Winter War analogy was a key part of the collective memory. Finally, due to a strong tradition of national consensus in foreign and security policy, the shift in the public opinion became overwhelming: when the tide had turned, only very few resisted. In sum, four factors enabled the public opinion change: a rational basis for opinion change, a sense of urgency, an emotional push and the consensus effect. Although public opinion is often seen as stabilising and retardant force particularly in foreign and security policy, it can also be a driver for change when suitable conditions such as those in Finland exist.
... South Korean President's credibility and approval ratings have gone way down because of his many irrational political decisions, and the decisions that he makes become more controversial than others. The people of South Korea have initiated marches and rallies in many places, and the public could lower the adoption rate of a resolution by expressing dissent through official channels, in order to call on the South Korean government to put pressure on the Japanese government to stop discharging nuclear-contaminated water into the sea [4]. However, at this stage, the influence of public opinion on governmental decision-making is smaller than that in the past, and the demonstrations and protests of the South Korean people are not effective at this stage [5]. ...
In August 2023, Japan began to discharge a pile of nuclear contaminated water into the sea, which is very harmful to the environment and ecology as well as human health. South Korea, as one of Japan’s closest neighbours and also the most affected by nuclear-contaminated water, the public broke out in large-scale protests and marches in many places, and was strongly condemned by the opposition party. However, the Korean government also ignored domestic public opinion and the demands of the opposition parties this time and insisted on supporting the Japanese government’s behaviour. This paper analyses and compares the conflict between the Korean government and the public, Korean parties, and the international situation through this crisis. The study found that with the polarisation of the Korean political scene and the tension of the international situation, the two-party conflict at home, the international conflict between the two poles against the confrontation led by China, Russia and the United States, the two pairs of major contradictions are gradually severe, in which the interests of the involvement of the authorities and the regime of strife to the extent that the South Korean government authorities to ignore public opinion brought about by the negative impacts of the public opinion, so it chose to focus on stabilizing the situation at home and abroad to stabilize and consolidate the power. Understanding these factors is essential in comprehending the complexities and contradictions between public opinion and governmental decision-making.
... An important research question, then, is whether politicians have accurate perceptions of voter preferences. A growing body of research demonstrates that politicians hold rather inaccurate perceptions of what voters want: Politicians regularly assume that a majority of their voters supports a proposal, while most voters actually oppose it, or vice versa (see, e.g., Broockman & Skovron, 2018;Clausen et al., 1983;Eichenberger et al., 2021;Hedlund & Friesema, 1972;Norris & Lovenduski, 2004;Walgrave et al., 2022Walgrave et al., , 2023. Their perceptions being flawed, politicians risk acting unresponsively, communicating poorly, and, ultimately, disappointing citizens. ...
Research has shown that politicians’ perceptions of public opinion are subject to social projection. When estimating the opinions of voters on a broad range of issues, politicians tend to assume that their own preferences are shared by voters. This article revisits this finding and adds to the literature in three ways. First, it makes a conceptual contribution by bringing together different approaches to the analysis of projection and its consequences. Second, relying on data from surveys with politicians (n = 866) in four countries (Belgium, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland) conducted between March 2018 and September 2019, it shows that there is more projection in politicians’ estimations of their partisan electorate than in their estimations of the general public or of their geographic district. Third, comparing the data on politician projection with data from parallel surveys with citizens, the article reveals that— at least in three out of the four countries studied here— elected politicians are not better at avoiding erroneous projection than ordinary citizens. The article discusses the implications of these findings for the workings of representative democracy.
How elected representatives think about public opinion affects the degree to which policies are congruent with the public’s policy preferences. This is especially true for politicians occupying leadership positions, their perceptions matter even more. Extant work concluded that politicians in general do not exhibit a high perceptual accuracy, but direct evidence of the relative accuracy of leaders’ perceptions of public opinion is missing. Drawing on surveys among politicians and citizens in four countries, this study examines the accuracy of the public opinion perceptions of leaders and backbenchers. Irrespective of how leadership is defined and operationalized – executive or party leadership, formal or informal leadership, current or past leadership – we find low perceptual accuracy levels among leading politicians. Compared to backbenchers, and although politicians themselves consider leaders to have a special nose for public opinion, leading politicians do not possess a special public opinion rating skill.
Studies have shown that citizens’ engagement on social media drives politicians to adapt the issues they discuss online. However, for representative democracy to function effectively, politicians must not only discuss these issues but also act on them. This paper explores whether higher citizens’ engagement on social media shapes the issues politicians address online and leads to substantive agenda responsiveness, such as proposing legislation or raising issues in parliament. To do this, we examined over 370,000 Facebook posts by more than 350 politicians in Australia, Belgium, and the United States. Our results indicate that higher citizens’ engagement on politicians’ own social media regarding an issue increases the likelihood of politicians promoting concrete legislative or parliamentary actions related to that issue, regardless of the issue’s salience. These findings highlight social media’s role in informing and motivating politicians’ agenda responsiveness, with important implications for the current state of representative democracy.
Subnational variations in political culture and policy attitudes are a hallmark feature of multilevel systems of government, yet we know comparatively little about how and why citizens of these systems subjectively perceive regional differences in political values. Using data from a specially commissioned survey under the auspices of the Provincial Diversity Project, this article analyses subjective perceptions of difference across provinces in Canada. It shows that individuals believe their regions have distinct political values, but also that they systematically overestimate that difference. In their estimations of regional distinctiveness, individuals are informed by the value profiles of the regions in which they live, but also by their own policy preferences. The findings clarify the salience of internal boundaries within multilevel or federal states, and enable us to understand how myths of distinctiveness flourish, but also provide an important extension on debates about misperceptions in politics.
While it is generally admitted that governments in most democracies make extensive use of public opinion research, we do not know much about the way they mobilize this resource. When and why do they want to learn about public opinion? What determines differences in the intensity of government polling over the electoral cycle? Are government opinion polls primarily a tool for testing the reception of government proposals or for learning more about issues that are important to citizens? And what does this tell us about the way political representation works? Understanding governments as actors in the production of public opinion, not just as passive consumers, our focus is on polls commissioned directly by governments. We argue that government polls can help us to better understand how contemporary political representation works since they can play an important role as ‘update instrument’ in anticipatory representation or as a decision‐making aid in promissory representation. By studying government polls as dependent variable, we develop an innovative research design and systematically analyse the factors that explain whether the intensity of government polling (the number of questions asked) varies across different stages of the electoral cycle and whether the issues they ask about correspond more to the government's priorities or those of the public. We present evidence from Germany, mobilizing an original database of all survey questions directly commissioned by the German government during the 18th and 19th legislative periods (2013–2021). Our findings help to better understand the factors that determine the intensity of government polling at different moments of the electoral cycle and to identify the different logic of representation behind this activity. The transition from the post‐election period to the routine period and from the routine period to the pre‐election period correspond to turning points in the German government's use of this instrument. While we could not observe any direct effects of the electoral cycle on the intensity of government polling, the interplay between the former and different types of policy issues proves to be insightful. The government commissions significantly more survey questions on government priorities during the first 3 months in office than during routine times and significantly more survey questions on salient issues as federal elections approach. Moreover, we show that governments commission fewer questions on issues they ‘own’, which points in the same direction as previous studies showing that governments are less interested in public opinion on these issues.
While the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the lives of many people worldwide, it is debated whether it led to the defeat of incumbent Donald Trump in the 2020 American presidential election. We argue that the COVID-19 pandemic had a significantly negative impact on Trump’s support due to his conflicting and populist rhetoric, which culminated in contradictory behavior at a time when Americans sought a consistent leader to “rally round the flag.” We use both waves of the ANES 2020 Survey to determine what support for Trump would have looked like if the COVID-19 pandemic had lower influence in citizens’ electoral decision-making compared to real world conditions using regressions and a counterfactual strategy. Our findings suggest that Trump’s electoral defeat depended on multiple factors, with aggregate-level analyzes suggesting that Trump would have received more support had the management of the health crisis mattered less in voting decisions.
This study examines the micro-level foundations of how policy responsiveness may come about. Our study builds on the assumption that elected officials' information source use shapes their policy actions. We analyze the variation in information sources elected officials rely on for agenda-setting and policy formulation, distinguishing between public opinion sources, advocacy sources, and expert sources. Additionally, we examine how elected officials' public opinion sources vary across individuals, parties, and political systems. Based on a 2015 survey with 345 Members of Parliament in Belgium and Canada, the results indicate that the actions of elected representatives are more affected by public opinion sources like citizens and the mass media when they initially prioritize issues for policy action, while interest groups are prominent in both stages, and parties and expert sources are more used in the policy formulation phase. Furthermore, politicians in majoritarian systems, those belonging to the opposition and members of populist parties, tend to rely more on public opinion sources than their peers in proportional systems, those in the majority and non-populist parties.
This study draws together theories of women’s substantive representation and research on politicians’ knowledge of constituent preferences. We ask whether politicians are better at predicting their constituents’ policy preferences when they share the same gender. In doing so, we contribute to knowledge about the mechanisms underlying substantive representation. Using original surveys of 3,750 Canadians and 867 elected politicians, we test whether politicians correctly perceive gender gaps in their constituents’ policy preferences and whether women politicians are better at correctly identifying the policy preferences of women constituents. Contrary to expectations from previous research, we do not find elected women to be better at predicting the preferences of women constituents. Instead, we find that all politicians — regardless of their gender — perform better when predicting women’s policy preferences and worse when predicting men’s preferences. The gender of the constituent matters more than the gender of the politician.
For representation to work, voters and politicians need to know each other’s policy preferences. While we know that this may not be the case for voters, a growing body of research shows that politicians also regularly misperceive the position of the public or their party’s electorate. However, the two strands of literature are usually not linked, and there is a lack of studies that analyse the mutual (mis)perceptions of citizens and elites. To fill this gap, this paper uses data from three waves of the German Longitudinal Election Study to compare the mutual perceptions of candidates and their party electorates on the left-right scale and on three policy issues. Three findings are noteworthy: First, candidates are only slightly more accurate than voters. Second, in contrast to previous studies, there is no evidence of a conservative bias among politicians. Third, projection plays an important role in both voters’ and candidates' misperceptions. Where both groups think the others are is strongly influenced by their own preferences.
Politicians learning about public opinion and responding to their resulting perceptions is one key way via which responsive policy-making comes about. Despite the strong normative importance of politicians’ understanding of public opinion, empirical evidence on how politicians learn about these opinions in the first place is scant. Drawing on survey data collected from almost 900 incumbent politicians in five countries, this study presents unique descriptive evidence on which public opinion sources politicians deem most useful. The findings show that politicians deem direct citizen contact and information from traditional news media as the most useful sources of public opinion information, while social media cues and polls are considered much less useful. These findings matter for substantive representation, and for citizens’ feeling of being represented.
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