๐ง Do politicians misread their constituents' preferences?
โก๏ธUsing a new method where politicians draw preference distributions, N Dias, @jacklucas.bsky.social & @liorsheffer.bsky.social show that conservative overestimation is smaller than assumed www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView
We only looked at overall L-R ideology here, but other work that looks at the conservative bias across policy issues (@dbroockman.bsky.social and @cskovron.bsky.social in APSR, @jbpilet.bsky.social et al. in APSR, @awhf.bsky.social et al. in APSR) has documented it on both dimensions.
Our results motivate a reexamination of pervasive arguments and evidence on politicians' inability to correctly gauge public opinion, and point towards domain-general cognitive biases as a central source of elite misperception. Lots more in the paper:
cup.org/4kltoyE
Politicians nevertheless exhibit strong psychological projection: they begin building out distributions by anchoring them close to their own attitudes, a pattern that counterbalances conservative over-estimation among left-wing politicians but reinforces it among right-wing politicians. /3
We ask 800 Canadian politicians to draw the full distribution of their constituents' preferences. We first replicate the well-documented conservative bias in public opinion perception using point estimates, and then show that its size is cut by a full half when politicians draw distributions /2
New and open access, in @psrm.bsky.social: What happens when we make politicians draw distributions? Nic Dias, @jacklucas.bsky.social and I explore whether the large errors politicians make about public opinion are artificially inflated by how researchers ask them to estimate it /1
cup.org/4kltoyE
I should also have mentioned this paper by @noamgidron.bsky.social et al. osf.io/preprints/so...
Who protests against democratic backsliding? A new working paper with Margalit, Sheffer and Yakir examines this issue and finds that peopleโs conceptions of what democracy means play a crucial role in predicting whether they engage in active opposition to backsliding efforts. osf.io/preprints/so...
๐ What kind of personalities are drawn to politics? ๐ณ๏ธ
This cross-national study across ๐จ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ณ๐ฑ๐จ๐ญ explores #Representation and how honesty-humility and other HEXACO personality traits shape peopleโs ambition to run for office ๐งต1/2
buff.ly/xk4qMa3
Promotional banner for the European Journal of Political Research available on Cambridge Core, featuring the logo of Cambridge University Press.
#OpenAccess from @ejprjournal.bsky.social -
Too honest and humble to run for office? Citizensโ personality traits, nascent ambition, and recruitment - https://cup.org/4ncO4c0
- Marc van de Wardt, P.Bundi, P.J.Loewen, @annerasmussen.bsky.social, @liorsheffer.bsky.social & F.Varone
#FirstView
Over a year ago (!) Roee Levy and I wrote this op-ed (that you can auto-translate) on Israel's responsibility for the horrifying famine in Gaza. The starvation persists. The immoral war in Gaza must end. If you can, protest with us today: 7pm, Habima Square, Tel Aviv
www.ynet.co.il/news/article...
Our findings shed light on the personality selection funnel into higher-office politics, and help explain resulting leader behaviour patterns. Proud to be part of the team working on this paper, led by Thomas Bergeron, and including Eran Amsalem, Jeroen Joly, and Peter Loewen.
Figure summarizing AMCEs of different factors used in the Study 3 conjoint experiment reported in the paper
High levels of openness to experience, which characterize most politicians exhibit, are only weakly appealing, especially among right-leaning voters. In a conjoint experiment, we find that these effects on leader preference outweigh factors such as age, education, gender, and experience. /3
Table describing the Big Five personality traits used in the study
Figure describing overall results from Study 1 described in the paper
We find remarkable consistency across countries and ideologies when citizens choose their party leaders: they are extremely averse to displays of neuroticism, and strongly reward candidates who are conscientious, agreeable, and to a lesser degree extrovert /2
Screen shot of the title, author list, and abstract of the Political Psychology paper "What Personality Traits do Citizens Want Politicians to Have?"
Now in @ispp-pops.bsky.social: what type of personality do citizens want their leaders to have? In a series of studies conducted in Belgium, Canada, and Israel, we present citizens with profiles of potential leaders with different personality configurations drawn using the Big Five traits /1
BJPolS abstract discussing politicians' perceptions of public opinion accuracy regarding leadership performance, featured on a green background with white text.
From February 2025 -
Do Political Leaders Understand Public Opinion Better than Backbenchers? - cup.org/3CNR4dt
- Stefaan Walgrave, Julie Sevenans, Frรฉdรฉric Varone,
@liorsheffer.bsky.social & @breunig.bsky.social
#OpenAccess
The most important paper on democratic backsliding I've read this year
๐จWhy do masses support democratic backsliding?๐จ
A new @AJPS_Editor paper with Yotam Margalit, @liorsheffer.bsky.social and Itamar Yakir explores this question in the Israeli context. Our findings emphasize the role of leader attachment and affective polarization.
doi.org/10.1111/ajps...
Thanks Lucy! We love the Fastenrath and Marx paper, and figuring out which politicians even benchmark themselves against opinion polling is a priority for us, along with better understanding the inherent tension politicians face between responding to public opinion and working to change it.
Our findings undermine the idea that leaders possess some unique capacity to 'get' the public. And because they have the most power to shape agendas and policies, their perceptual errors are especially concerning for the kind of representation citizens get in democratic systems. More in the paper!
This result holds when we ask politicians to think about the general public and their own party voters; under different definitions of seniority; and even when we specifically look at those politicians who are (incorrectly) singled out by colleagues for being good at understanding public opinion. /3
We find that while politicians themselves strongly believe that top politicians - such as party leaders and cabinet ministers - excel at understanding what people want, in reality these senior figures - who were included in our sample of >800 politicians - are just as inaccurate as the rest! /2
Now in @bjpols.bsky.social: Are leaders really better at reading public opinion? In a large-scale study led by Stefaan Walgrave and Julie Sevenans, we test the assumption that politicians in leadership positions have more accurate knowledge of public opinion than others. /1
doi.org/10.1017/S000...
This paper joins a couple of others demonstrating that politicians have a conservative bias in their expectations of public opinion. This work is hugely illuminative of elite attitudes and so is of vital interest to activists pursuing progressive change
Very cool paper! Well worth your time if you study elite decision-making or elections and accountability.
@annerasmussen.bsky.social, and Maj-Britt Sterba!
Stefaan Walgrave, Karolin Soontjens, Eran Amsalem, Pirmin Bundi, Frรฉdรฉric Varone, @stefaniebailer.bsky.social, @nathaliebrack.bsky.social, @breunig.bsky.social, Linda Coufalovรก, Patrick Dumont, @nathaliegiger.bsky.social, @miguelpereira.bsky.social, Mikael Persson, @jbpilet.bsky.social /6
@jacklucas.bsky.social, Peter Loewen and I are indebted to our wonderful team of co-authors: /5