Inferences Made Easy: Partisan Voting in Congress, Voter Awareness, and Senator Approval. (September 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dancey, Logan; Sheagley, Geoffrey
• Is Part Of: American politics research. Volume 44:Number 5(2016:Sep.)
• Page Start: 844
• Page End: 874
• Publication Date: 2016-09
• Subjects: senator approval -- party cues -- political knowledge -- party unity; Public opinion -- United States -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- Periodicals; 320.973
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X16630378
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1532-673X

Abstract

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.