The people think what I think: False consensus and unelected elite misperception of public opinion
Alexander C. Furnas,
Timothy M. LaPira
Abstract:Political elites must know and rely faithfully on the public will to be democratically responsive. Recent work on elite perceptions of public opinion shows that reelection‐motivated politicians systematically misperceive the opinions of their constituents to be more conservative than they are. We extend this work to a larger and broader set of unelected political elites such as lobbyists, civil servants, journalists, and the like, and report alternative empirical findings. These unelected elites hold similarly… Show more
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