Red Scare? Revisiting Joe McCarthy’s Influence on 1950s Elections

Abstract

1980 election reflected an affirmation of his conservative agenda, and he used his victory as a platform to enact cuts in taxes. To others, however, the election seemed more a rejection of

The Causal Effects of Elite Position‐Taking on Voter Attitudes: Field Experiments with Elite Communication

“…This does not imply citizens fail to hold their elected officials accountable altogether-for example, the citizens who behaved consistently with position adoption in our study may be judging these politicians based on their results, rather than their policy methods (Fiorina 1981). Our results also leave open the possibility that politicians think the constraints public opinion places on them are stronger than they are (e.g., Berinsky and Lenz 2014). Indeed, the legislators expressed surprise at their success in affecting constituent opinion; as the citizens who choose to interact with legislators tend to be more politically engaged, legislators may form inaccurate understandings of the degree to which the average constituent has firm positions on issues (Miller and Stokes 1963).…”

Bias in Perceptions of Public Opinion among Political Elites

“… 5 See Berinsky and Lenz (2014); Druckman and Jacobs (2006); Enos and Hersh (2017); Henderson and Brooks (2016); Jacobs and Shapiro (1995). For example, Druckman and Jacobs (2006) and Jacobs and Shapiro (1995) find that politicians are highly attuned to public opinion data when they do have access to it, although are constrained in the amount of public opinion data to which they do have access.…”

Electoral Campaigns and Biased Perceptions of Voter Interests

“…Classic scholarship recognized that for democratic representation to work, officeholders need to have accurate information about the interests of their constituency (Miller and Stokes 1963), and recent work has established that officeholders' perceptions vary widely and are often inaccurate, but that many partisan actors do respond to information by changing their behavior. Perceptions may not be accurate because actors misinterpret some elections (Berinsky and Lenz 2014), dismiss polls (Kuru, Pasek, and Traugott 2017) or inaccurately learn from or in fact discount (non‐congruent) constituent opinions (Broockman and Skovron 2018; Butler and Dynes 2016). There is some evidence that elites' beliefs are relatively more accurate: Broockman and Skovron (2018) demonstrate that acting state legislators and candidates of all parties misperceive their constituents' interests, but show that establishment figures like incumbents and campaigners in competitive elections have more accurate beliefs.…”