Again, it may be the case that Sinema has a plan, perhaps one that views the proposals — which would, among other things, increase spending on infrastructure, tackling climate change and health-care coverage — through the lens of what Arizonans seek from government policy. If it is that case that her objections to the bill in its original form are based on perceived hostility from her voters, it is worth considering what we know about such perceptions.
In 2013, David E. Broockman and Christopher Skovron published a paper called “What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymmetric Misperceptions and Prospects for Constituency Control.” A very academic descriptor but one with several useful findings.
For example, they asked a number of state legislators to estimate support for universal health care and same-sex marriage among their constituents and then compared those responses to the actual level of support in the districts. In general, Democratic legislators underestimated support for both issues and Republican legislators underestimated that support even more dramatically. You can see that on the graphs below; the black line indicates a perfect alignment of prediction with support. For both the blue (Democratic) and red (Republican) dots, the trend is well below the actual levels of support.
“These systematic distortions in elite perception suggest an extremely biased view of the American electorate among those who vie to exercise political authority,” Broockman and Skovron write.
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