On 22 September, Jack Lucas will visit the department and give a talk on politicians' misperceptions. Jack Lucas is a professor of Political Science at the University of Calgary, Canada, and is currently one of the leading researchers shaping the frontier of how we study political representation, specifically questions about how politicians read and understand public opinion. 

Time and venue:

Tuesday, 22 September, 1:00-2:00 pm in the large meeting room.

Please note: Jack Lucas will be at the department from Tuesday through Wednesday and will be available for individual meetings. Please email Martin Bisgaard as soon as possible if you are interested in meeting with Jack Lucas.

More info:

Jack Lucas

Details on the talk:

“Much of politicians' perceptual error is domain-general processing of proportions”

Considerable research has documented large errors in politicians' perceptions of their constituents' characteristics and preferences. Explanations of these pervasive errors using domain-specific factors, such as politicians' experience or institutional positions, have invariably failed. We suggest that politicians' errors reflect a domain-general tendency to overestimate small proportions and underestimate large ones. Analyzing all available recent studies and our own original data (70,740 perceptions from 12,860 politicians in seven countries), we find that this "midpoint hedging’" accounts for roughly 65% of the average magnitude of politicians' errors. Because politicians must understand their constituents to represent them well, such a perception-distorting cognitive tendency potentially undermines democratic representation. Our findings suggest that this distortion is indeed substantively large, widespread, and most acute when public opinion is clearest.