Inferences Made Easy

Partisan Voting in Congress, Voter Awareness, and Senator Approval

Bibliographic Data

ID6179619
AuthorsLogan Dancey (0000-0002-5348-5369, Wesleyan University, corresponding author), Geoffrey Sheagley (0000-0002-1743-6201, University of Minnesota, Duluth)
Year2016
Volume44
Issue5
Pages844-874
Publication date2016-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Politics Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1532-673X • E-ISSN: 1552-3373
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1532673x16630378
OpenAlexW2274074601
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited46

This article investigates whether constituents are able to accurately infer their senators’ votes when the senator frequently votes against the party line. We find that when senators repeatedly vote against the party line, constituents’ ability to correctly identify their senators’ votes drops precipitously while levels of misinformation rise. We then show that citizens represented by senators who tend to vote against the party line are also less able to connect their policy positions with their evaluations of those senators. These findings indicate that there is substantial variation across senators in the ability of their constituents to hold them accountable for their votes while in office. Constituents simply know less about the positions taken by moderate senators and have a harder time aligning their levels of policy agreement with a senator with their evaluation of that senator if she frequently votes against her party

Contingent vote · Economics · Group voting ticket · Law and economics · Misinformation · Political science · Politics · Spoilt vote · Voting · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Public Administration

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