Stunning. I didn’t quite see those colours but still had an amazing stay..

Already congratulated you but many (!) congrats here too. Really happy this happened 👏 🕺well-deserved!

@fgenovese.bsky.social ...especially because we know that media salience is associated with improvements in policy representation more generally (judged based on opinion-policy congruence) and it's likely it could also affect perceptions of public opinion ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

@fgenovese.bsky.social We have issues that vary in perceived salience according to the representatives but do not have data on their media consumption patterns. This probably would not offset the effect of self-projection but media consumption would be very relevant to examine in future research

@kingsqpe.bsky.social @kcl-spe.bsky.social @polscileiden.bsky.social @ecprinterestgroups.bsky.social

Bottom line:

Politicians’ perceptions of public opinion appear more closely linked to who they are than to who they talk to

Full paper here: 🔗 doi.org/10.1086/734528

10/10

For democracy, this is both worrying and reassuring:
⚠️Worrying, because many politicians soften simply see the public as a mirror of themselves.
✅Reassuring, because centrist politicians—often in government—should be more likely to get majority opinion right.

9/10

Taken together:
-Misperceptions are widespread
-They are most strongly associated with self-projection - Interest groups play a more modest, indirect role

This suggests that getting representation “right” depends more on curbing projection than on changing group contacts

8/10

A mediation analysis suggests why:

If interest groups matter, their influence is mostly indirect—by shaping politicians’ own views, which in turn are associated with their (biased) perceptions of citizens.

7/10

What about interest groups?

Links to business groups are associated with less accurate perceptions—but not with systematic bias

Interactions with citizen groups show little connection to either accuracy or bias of perceptions

So, interest groups likely matter less than often feared.

6/10

Self-projection matters a lot:

Politicians’ estimates move systematically toward their own views:
(1)Right-wing politicians think the public is more right-wing.
(2) Left-wing politicians think the public is more left-wing.

“False consensus” in action.

5/10

We consider a comprehensive set of indicators capturing
- information from
- contact with, and
- (various forms of) engagement in interest groups.

And we measure at both the accuracy of and ideological bias in perceptions of public opinion

4/10

We then test two main factors which could be linked to these misperceptions:

(1) Self-projection – politicians assume the public thinks like they do.
(2) Interest groups – ties to business or citizen groups correlate with perceptions.

3/10

We compare what citizens actually think on 5 salient policy issues (immigration, safety, healthcare, culture, environment) with politicians’ estimates

On average, politicians misestimate support by 22 percentage points (!).

BUT biases vary a lot (!) by issue & country.

2/10

Many congrats @alexanderfurnas.com et al. :-)

Many congrats to you & not least IE (!) Catherine

Many (!) congrats! Very happy to read this