How accurate are politicians’ estimations of public opinion?

The first round of the POLPOP project was carried out in 2018 in five countries: Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany and Switzerland.

This focused on politicians’ perceptions of public opinion. Contrary to expectations, it found that politicians were no better at estimating public support for policy proposals than voters in general (Walgrave et al., 2023).

There are however, patterns to these misperceptions. Politicians perceive public opinion to be more right-wing than it actually is on cultural and economic issues, but not necessarily on immigration (Pilet et al., 2023). Further, politicians often mistakenly assume that voters agree with them, particularly voters who support their party (Sevenans et al., 2023).

Politicians form better estimates of public opinion on issues their party ‘owns’ (e.g. Green parties and the environment) (Varone and Helfer, 2022), and indeed parties are more careful about defying the wishes of their party supporters on such issues (Soontjens, 2022a). Further, politicians with greater ties to citizen groups form more accurate perceptions (Eichenberger et al., 2022).

Where do politicians’ perceptions of public opinion come from?

Politicians’ main sources of information about public opinion are direct contact with citizens and traditional news media, with social media and polling considered much less useful (Walgrave & Soontjens, 2023). But at the same, time politicians tend to perceive the news media as being slightly biased against their party, particularly senior politicians and those from right-wing parties (Soontjens et al., 2021).

Do politicians feel held to account by voters?

Accountability works! The more politicians feel unsure about their re-election, the more they respond to voter preferences (Soontjens and Sevenans, 2022).

Politicians who more strongly believe that voters are aware of what they do and will hold them accountable for it at the ballot box interact more frequently with ordinary citizens, discuss public opinion more often with their fellow colleagues, and spend more time collecting public opinion information (Soontjens and Walgrave, 2021).

Which politicians feel accountable? Politicians from populist parties and those who are directly elected, rather than being elected as part of a party list, feel more monitored by voters (Soontjens, 2022b). Contrary to expectations, more senior politicians who are more visible to the public do not feel more monitored by voters (Soontjens, 2022b). However, all politicians over-estimate how much voters are aware of their actions, particularly by over-generalising the feedback that they receive from more engaged citizens (Soontjens, 2021).

What are politicians’ policy preferences and where do they come from?

We also tested politicians’ policy preferences, and whether these were influenced by personality type. We found that politicians are generally less supportive of redistributive policies than citizens, regardless of politicians’ ideology (Helfer et al., 2021).

Politicians who are more open to experience hold more liberal economic and social policies, while more extravert politicians tend to hold more conservative economic positions (Amsalen and Sheffer, 2023). Further, politicians who score higher on conscientiousness and spend more time on constituency work are more likely to hold positions that are different from the position of their party colleagues but which align with their party supporters’ preferences.

There is a general tendency for politicians to update their position on an issue when learning that it opposes the preferences of a majority of their electorate (Sevenans, 2021), suggesting that at least some politicians desire to be congruent with voters.