Study finds: there is a systematic bias against liberal policies at the state/national level.

It was published by mistake.

The page has already disappeared.

I know the difference between the sheep and the goats and how to separate them.

The study shows that the wolves guide both.

That's why they had to hide the study quickly.

Broockman and Skovron find that all legislators consistently believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are. This includes Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. But conservative legislators generally overestimate the conservatism of their constituents by 20 points. “This difference is so large that nearly half of conservative politicians appear to believe that they represent a district that is more conservative on these issues than is the most conservative district in the entire country,” Broockman and Skovron write. This finding held up across a range of issues. Here, for example, are their findings for health care and same-sex marriage:
SEE ARTICLE FOR MORE GRAPHS

...
The X axis is the district’s actual views, and the Y axis their legislators’ estimates of their views. The thin black line is perfect accuracy, the response you’d get from a legislator totally in tune with his constituents. Lines above it would signify the politicians think the district more liberal than it actually is; if they’re below it, that means the legislators are overestimating their constituents’ conservatism. Liberal legislators consistently overestimate opposition to same-sex marriage and universal health care, but only mildly. Conservative politicians are not even in the right ballpark.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/04/one-study-explains-why-its-tough-to-pass-liberal-laws

The Sss in the original post blew up the url

By and large they are male, white, over 50 years old and fairly well off.

...and unable to rationally contemplate the Affordable Care Act.

on what their constituents want or don't really care.

we are not getting a choice of liberal candidates--we only get moderate candidates to choose from in the first place and they vote THEIR agenda.

I find DU like that some days.
but I'm an old socialist an former member of the
SDS.

I'm thinking the bigger the contribution, the bigger the skew expected. The numbers could probably be re-analyzed against each of the politicians' received campaign contributions, ideally on a z-axis.

...to essentially remind the representatives who funded them. Then it would be agricultural and pharma lobbies who spread their money everywhere. Weapons makers are pretty "generous" with their cash.

The amphibian protection lobby gets forgotten.

is paying attention to your progressive state and why you wrote a letter to him.

Politicians are much smarter than we are and are selflessly sacrificing their personal lives and opportunities, just to make sure we are on the correct path. Have you no gratitude for all they do?

who they consider to be their constituents. That might clear everything up.

Instead of marveling about a mysterious perception gap where reps perceive their constituents to be more conservative than they are (gee, aren't those reps misinformed or stupid?), it makes more sense to seek a different explanation.

In most cases I'd bet that the people the reps think about when asked about their constituents' beliefs are the people who give them money. And small $20 - $100 donors mean little when it comes to considering policy, it's about the large donors, and the corporate lobbyists who work for the large donors. Those donors, for the most part, lean more to the right-wing side, and, more importantly, to corporate interests, certainly not to liberal policies.

Overall I thought this was a good article. I downloaded the whole working paper from here:
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~broockma/broockman_skovron_asymmetric_misperceptions.pdf

It's quite large but actually looks interesting, maybe I'll find time to read it someday.