Study: Lawmakers Assume Voters Are Way More Conservative Than They Are

[demmiblue]

Source: TPM

Researchers from UC Berkeley and the Univeristy of Michigan dug up some surprising results after posing the question: How much do lawmakers really know about their voters' political views?

"Pick an American state legislator at random, and chances are that he or she will have massive misperceptions about district views on big-ticket issues, typically missing the mark by 15 percentage points," David Broockman and Christopher Skovron wrote in a study for the Scholarly Strategy Network originally published in 2013.

To investigate the question, the duo surveyed thousands of state legislators and compared their perceptions of voters to people's actual views, derived from a large body of public opinion data.

Their conclusion: "legislators usually believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are."

On three issues — universal healthcare, same-sex marriage, and welfare — lawmakers' assumptions about what their constituents believed were "15-20 percent more conservative, on average," than the actual base of public support for such issues.

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/study-lawmakers-liberal-conservative-assume

Source: Scholars Strategy Network

<snip>



Breaking down misperceptions by the leanings of legislators reveals further imbalances:

The typical conservative legislator overestimates his or her district’s conservatism by a whopping 20 percentage points. Indeed, he or she believes the district is even more conservative than the most right-leaning district in the entire country.

Liberals also think their constituents’ views are more conservative than they really are, but are typically only off by about five percentage points.

Most conservative legislators believe their positions on same-sex marriage and health care command majority support in their districts – but only two-fifths are correct. In contrast, liberal legislators usually share views with constituents, but one in five does not know it.

Read more: http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/content/politicians-think-american-voters-are-more-conservative-they-really-are

[daleanime]

1. Not an assumption, not a mistake...

they are doing what they have been payed to do, it's just that we're not the ones paying them. The rest is all CYA.

[swilton]

4. Absolutely

The issue is that the US is no longer a democracy but a plutocracy - Princeton Study April 2014.

"The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy," they write, "while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy

[SoapBox]

11. Agreed.

...bought and paid for.

The evil that is money in our political system.

[raouldukelives]

14. Some are paying them. Heck, some are partial owners of the very corporations killing us.

And it literally matters not the damage done in their name. Up to and quite possibly including the very end of our time on this planet. If not, most assuredly the horrible and miserable end for billions irregardless.
To most, the idea of personal responsibility ends the moment it connects to personal comfort. It is as true in the political world as it is in the corporate world. It is the same as it has ever been. Those who struggle to make things better eventually run into those getting paid to make it worse. Which is when the wave of change either breaches the barriers or falls harmlessly back into the sea.

[Fumesucker]

2. The constituents they are more likely to spend time with tend more conservative

That's simply the social milieu politicians move in, the wealthy and influential are the ones likely to be talking to your politicians.

[cali]

3. Not in my state. Legislators generally seem to reflect public opinion closely.

[nightscanner59]

5. So much is unseen in insular California

Or so I assume from your handle. On my recent trips southwestern/midwest states I'm shocked every time at the proliferation of right wing hate radio stations, huge pick'em'up trucks with Obama-vitriol stickers and the like plastered all over the back. It is that loudmouth Faux-noise mesmerized minority these rep's are thinking is their actual constituency. The remainder of folks throughout the territory who have common sense are scared to death of this well-armed bunch. I'm not kidding---
I took my dog to a dog park in Kingman, Arizona. There was an idiotic cowboy pulled up to let his dogs run around, and decked out in his old west garb complete with two six shooters, this man stood at the picnic table/shelter thing there and started preaching aloud his ultra-right wing sermon. He really looked angry as he lambasted everything from hell to breakfast about the liberal communist america-haters. Slowly, most everyone gathered their dogs and packed off. I did too after this: "I swore an oath to defend this nation from traitors, foreign and domestic, and I wouldn't hesitate one minute to blow away all these damn lib-rolls....." (it went on and on) as I got my pup and exited as well.
I spent nearly a month seeing something like this every day there. I was never so glad to see the welcome to California sign!

[cali]

6. Nope. Native Californian and grew up there and in CT but I've lived

in Vermont for a long time. I hear you about your Kingman experience. I had a similar one a few years back near Kingman.

[SoapBox]

12. Another reason I'm never, ever leaving California.

Well and the weather too.

[47of74]

16. Someone needs to explain to that horse's ass

Lots of liberals took the same oath he did and will not balk if they received a "...frag order to Maryland, or North Dakota, or Texas..."

http://sealaskatimes.blogspot.com/2010/03/article-i-wish-i-would-never-have-to.html?m=1

[One_Life_To_Give]

7. Is that Peer Reviewed? nt

[demmiblue]

10. I'm not sure...

it was published in 2013/2014. In the latest published work, there a couple of items that were removed for peer review (https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~broockma/broockman_skovron_asymmetric_misperceptions.pdf). So, at the time it was published, I guess I would consider it a working academic paper that was under peer review. I do not know what has happened since nor do I know what the academic/publishing procedures are. Perhaps it met some threshold that deemed it appropriate for publishing. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can chime in.

[tularetom]

8. If all you watch is network or cable news you would get that impression

And if you watch the sunday morning crapfest you would think John McCain is the most popular person in America and that there are very few liberals in public positions in the US.

You would also believe that President Obama and Hillary Clinton are extreme left wingers.

[valerief]

9. Lawmakers act on their BENEFACTORS' conservatism, not the voters. nt

[NewJeffCT]

13. why do you think Republicans run to the right

and Democrats run to the middle? It's what the media tells them to do.

[kpete]

15. K&R

and peace to you demmiblue,
kp

[hughee99]

17. Hmm... If a district is 20% more liberal than

It's elected official thinks, why is any elected official a republican? Something is fishy here. My first guess is that this is another one of those situations where a reporter has misinterpreted the findings of a study (I haven't read it yet), but it could be something else as well.

[7962]

18. MAybe being 20% more liberal still doesnt make the district liberal enough

to vote for the other guy?

[hughee99]

19. But then you'd have all these republicans winning with somewhere around 70% of the vote

and I don't believe that many republicans (or any group of politicians) gets elected by that big of a margin on a consistent basis nationally.

Either that or the study reflects the opinions of PEOPLE in the district, but isn't an accurate representation of VOTERS in the district, which is also a possibility.

[7962]

20. Thats a good point; could be folks that dont vote skew the numbers

[Midnight Writer]

21. It's a matter of intensity

Conservatives are just more fired up than liberals. Single issue voters (guns, God and gays, as well as racism and resentment of welfare and immigrants) will turn out more reliably than liberals. Outrage propaganda wins elections.

[merrily]

22. A lot of money, time and energy has been invested in the lie that

Americans are rightist. They are not.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12777036

Ask yourself: Who benefits from this lie? How?

Then you will know why so much money, time and energy has been spent to convince you that Americans are rightist.

[Peace Patriot]

23. Follow the voting machines....

...and good luck to you if you try to.

At the risk of saying this for the 1,000th time, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT when the votes in virtually every election in the country are 'counted' by electronic voting machines run on 'TRADE SECRET' programming code--code that the public is forbidden to review--largely owned and controlled by ONE, PRIVATE, FAR RIGHTWING CORPORATION (ES&S, which bought out Diebold), with half the states doing NO AUDIT AT ALL of these machine results, and the other half doing a miserably inadequate 1% audit?

What do you expect? THIS is what you would expect from such a system--that the views and actions of allegedly elected government officials would be way, way out of sync with the people whom they allegedly represent.

E-voting with 'TRADE SECRET' code and zero or insufficient auditing is the coup de grace that was inflicted on an already very corrupt political system between 2002 and 2004. These election theft machines were spread across the country very quickly, like a plague, during that period, instigated by the Anthrax Congress with its "Help America Vote (for war)" Act by which state election officials were bribed and bullied to convert from a system of vote counting IN THE PUBLIC VENUE to a system of vote counting by the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.

It won't solve our problems as a democracy overnight, if we dump these election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' (so to speak)(--and have ourselves a REAL 'Boston Tea Party'), but, until we do, we can't even begin to implement the changes that are needed. A democracy revolution has been blocked here. THIS is HOW. And it's only going to get worse, with more and more utter wingnuts gaining control of local, state and federal policy, and with the so-called "center" of the political spectrum having been pulled far, far to the right, so that our average Democratic leader is, in truth, a fascist (believes in corporate-military elite rule), and, to the right of them are George Bush Jr, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and, more than likely, Jeb Bush, who would unleash nuclear armageddon in the Middle East (which would be an earth-wide armageddon, with Carl Sagan's "nuclear winter&quot , to profit from the devastation. Our corporate-military Democratic fascists wouldn't do THAT, though they tolerate the slow 'armageddon' of global warming. Those are our "choices." What's wrong with this picture? Look behind the curtain!