Appendix

How politicians learn about public opinion

“…Hendriks and Lees-Marshment, 2019). And, it confirms findings from interviews with Belgian MPs who seem to spend a lot of time talking to people; ‘ They immerse themselves intensely in a rich social life and interact with ordinary citizens at various occasions ’ (Walgrave et al, 2022: 83). It is likely that politicians value those informal meetings not only to learn whether people are in favour or against a certain policy, also to ‘feel the public mood’, to see how strongly people care about certain issues and what arguments they might have for those opinions.…”

“…Representatives prefer direct, raw, unmediated, and unaggregated public opinion signals (contact with ordinary people and their intimate network) above indirect, mediated, and aggregated signals (such as polls or talking to journalists). Politicians are probably aware of the fact that the ‘ordinary’ people they talk to cannot possibly form a representative sample of the public at large (at least, this is what Walgrave et al, 2022 found in Belgium). Yet, in what way the people they talk to diverge from the rest of the population is tough to judge.…”

“…Additionally, in some countries, the closed survey was followed by an open interview, and in these interviews politicians, without being cued, often referred to direct citizen contact as an important information source. Many provided us with a whole series of examples of the most mundane of occasions in which they interact with ordinary citizens (see, Walgrave et al, 2022 for the results of these interviews in Belgium). These anecdotes increase confidence in the fact that talking to ordinary citizens is indeed what politicians deem most valuable to understand public opinion.…”

“…This is all the more surprising since there is evidence that politicians care a lot about knowing the public’s preferences and very frequently engage in trying to stay abreast of it (see e.g. Walgrave et al, 2022). But how do they do it then?…”