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.
Thanks for the paper, and for answering questions. There are a couple of hypotheses I wonder about:
1) Politicians don't care about constituent's current opinions, but about their future response to actions the politican might undertake. For example, recent articles indicate widespread support in the U.S. for gun control, but a politician might anticipate: If I support a gun control measure then the NRA will run ads in my district; that will change many opinions [1], spread other negative stories about me, and galvanize my opponents both in public discussion and when getting voters to the polls.
2) The large differences between different subgroups explain the difference: All constituents, all voters, primary voters, and the few who vote in state legislative elections. (I challenge HN readers to name your state representatives without looking them up.)
If these issues are covered in the paper, I apologize; I read what I could now and searched the paper for related terms, but won't have time to finish reading until much later.
----
[1] I don't know that ads have this effect. My impression is that most people's opinions are weakly held and that they follow the herd on most issues (whichever herd they feel they belong to).
I think it would be fascinating to look at the dynamic of how young people interact with an increasingly-old government today. Personally I don't know too many people who believe in the system/even care enough to show up to public meetings, write their representatives, or even vote for that matter. Have these dynamics have changed over the years?
Is your research group working on anything in this vein?
>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.
Step 1 - From the district lists randomly select a small number of electors.
Step 2 - Sequester the electors.
Step 3 - The candidates present their proposals, background, arguments, counter arguments.
Step 4 - Electors listen, meditate and cast a secret vote.
Step 5 - Eliminate the candidate with the lowest number of votes.
Step 6 - Repeat from Step 3 until one candidate has more than 51%.
Step 7 - Dismiss the electors.
Some advantages:
- No need for expensive campaigns. Takes money out of politics.
- The "Trial" can be televised. People would get involved on what is going on.
- It reduces the need for tactical voting. Electors can vote for their first-choice candidate without fear of wasting their vote.
- Lesser-known candidates would have better odds of winning.
>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.
I think electing unqualified, easily-persuaded people into office is not a good idea. Jurors are the weakest part of our judicial system -- why do we pay professionals to convince unpaid non-professionals about the law? Wouldn't it be more efficient to just pay professionals to argue about it?
> 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.
And like jurors in juries, wouldn't we then be governed by people not smart enough to get out of their congressional term?
"both liberals and conservatives tend to overestimate how conservative their constituents are, conservatives’ perceptions in this regard are exceptionally strong – conservative politicians typically overestimate the conservatism of their constituencies by more than 20 percentage points on these issues. This difference is so large that nearly half of conservative politicians appear to believe that they represent a district that is as or more conservative on these issues than are the most conservative districts in the entire country."
I heard a quote years ago that "reality has a liberal bias." Based on the data...that appears true.
This 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.
Their age doesn't predict their accuracy. With that said, I like the idea of asking how they think various age groups think. Maybe they think their district is not as young as it is, maybe they think younger voters are more similar to older voters than they are, or maybe both.
It's kind of fascinating that the liberal assessments seem to reflect reality much more closely.
Why?
Conservative politicians don't have a good reason to be wrong. In fact, it's quite the opposite, the better at estimating who your constituents you are, the more likely you are to be reelected.
I'd guess probably error bias. As a conservative, if you overestimate the conservatism of your district, you're not likely to lose many votes (especially in a gerrymandered district). Whereas, if you overestimate the liberalism of your districts, the conservative element will punish you horribly.
Whereas, as a liberal, you have to be more in tune to a broad spectrum of issues in both directions or a challenger can carve off a chunk of your votes.
I think you make an interesting claim in your comment - that right wing voters are more likely than left wing voters to vote against (ie, punish) someone. I agree with you, since in my experience right wingers are more reactionary than left wingers, but I wonder if there's any data on that.
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.
politicians also show systematic misperceptions, with liberal politicians and conservative politicians both overestimating support for conservative policy positions,
This paper appears to use the term conservative to mean right wing. That's incorrect. You can be left wing and be a conservative; in fact, it's rather common in American today.
Looking the three perception statements on page 11, agreement means you agree to some rather radical change. A true conservative would disagree with all three questions due to that. Compared to the true conservative, a conservative right winger would be more likely to agree with the last, and a conservative left winger would be more likely to agree with the first two; however, they might not support any of them because they might be too radical. For example, I know many left wingers that support health care reform but don't support socialized medicine, so they'd likely disagree with "Implement a universal healthcare program to guarantee coverage to all Americans, regardless of income".
That leads to issues with the results. If a conservative left winger says no to the first two, s/he appears more right wing than s/he is.
On the other hand, if they are using conservative correctly, then it appears they are using liberal incorrectly. Liberal isn't the opposite of conservative. Radical is the opposite of conservative. There are radical right wingers that support same sex marriage who come to that idea from libertarianism.
The charts on specific questions are great, because they remove the terminology issue I'm raising, but when they identify the politician as liberal or conservative, it comes right back.
I'm sure the authors know this stuff better than I do, so I suspect I'm misunderstanding their work.
I know one of the authors posted here; I'd appreciate if he'd or someone else could clarify what I've got wrong.
[+] [-] dbroockman|10 years ago|reply
FWIW, we have data from 2014 across many more issues and the basic story is the same. Haven't finished writing that up.
[+] [-] akouts|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hackuser|10 years ago|reply
1) Politicians don't care about constituent's current opinions, but about their future response to actions the politican might undertake. For example, recent articles indicate widespread support in the U.S. for gun control, but a politician might anticipate: If I support a gun control measure then the NRA will run ads in my district; that will change many opinions [1], spread other negative stories about me, and galvanize my opponents both in public discussion and when getting voters to the polls.
2) The large differences between different subgroups explain the difference: All constituents, all voters, primary voters, and the few who vote in state legislative elections. (I challenge HN readers to name your state representatives without looking them up.)
If these issues are covered in the paper, I apologize; I read what I could now and searched the paper for related terms, but won't have time to finish reading until much later.
----
[1] I don't know that ads have this effect. My impression is that most people's opinions are weakly held and that they follow the herd on most issues (whichever herd they feel they belong to).
[+] [-] roymurdock|10 years ago|reply
Is your research group working on anything in this vein?
[+] [-] scott_s|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Afforess|10 years ago|reply
>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.
[+] [-] huherto|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gizmo686|10 years ago|reply
This is the way government worked in ancient Greece (or rather, Athens, but other Greece city-states copied the model).
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] intopieces|10 years ago|reply
I think electing unqualified, easily-persuaded people into office is not a good idea. Jurors are the weakest part of our judicial system -- why do we pay professionals to convince unpaid non-professionals about the law? Wouldn't it be more efficient to just pay professionals to argue about it?
[+] [-] jgroszko|10 years ago|reply
And like jurors in juries, wouldn't we then be governed by people not smart enough to get out of their congressional term?
[+] [-] ypeterholmes|10 years ago|reply
Most don't serve us anymore- they serve the people that put them there.
[+] [-] akouts|10 years ago|reply
I heard a quote years ago that "reality has a liberal bias." Based on the data...that appears true.
[+] [-] NotAPerson|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dbroockman|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsder|10 years ago|reply
Why?
Conservative politicians don't have a good reason to be wrong. In fact, it's quite the opposite, the better at estimating who your constituents you are, the more likely you are to be reelected.
I'd guess probably error bias. As a conservative, if you overestimate the conservatism of your district, you're not likely to lose many votes (especially in a gerrymandered district). Whereas, if you overestimate the liberalism of your districts, the conservative element will punish you horribly.
Whereas, as a liberal, you have to be more in tune to a broad spectrum of issues in both directions or a challenger can carve off a chunk of your votes.
[+] [-] SteveLAnderson|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulHoule|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chongli|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hackuser|10 years ago|reply
politicians also show systematic misperceptions, with liberal politicians and conservative politicians both overestimating support for conservative policy positions,
[+] [-] SteveLAnderson|10 years ago|reply
Looking the three perception statements on page 11, agreement means you agree to some rather radical change. A true conservative would disagree with all three questions due to that. Compared to the true conservative, a conservative right winger would be more likely to agree with the last, and a conservative left winger would be more likely to agree with the first two; however, they might not support any of them because they might be too radical. For example, I know many left wingers that support health care reform but don't support socialized medicine, so they'd likely disagree with "Implement a universal healthcare program to guarantee coverage to all Americans, regardless of income".
That leads to issues with the results. If a conservative left winger says no to the first two, s/he appears more right wing than s/he is.
On the other hand, if they are using conservative correctly, then it appears they are using liberal incorrectly. Liberal isn't the opposite of conservative. Radical is the opposite of conservative. There are radical right wingers that support same sex marriage who come to that idea from libertarianism.
The charts on specific questions are great, because they remove the terminology issue I'm raising, but when they identify the politician as liberal or conservative, it comes right back.
I'm sure the authors know this stuff better than I do, so I suspect I'm misunderstanding their work.
I know one of the authors posted here; I'd appreciate if he'd or someone else could clarify what I've got wrong.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TerryADavis|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]