IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/socsci/v105y2024i4p913-933.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Look over there. Where? A compositional approach to the modeling of public opinion on the most important problem

Author

Listed:
  • Steven Jokinsky
  • Christine S. Lipsmeyer
  • Andrew Q. Philips
  • Laron K. Williams
  • Guy D. Whitten

Abstract

Objective This study aims to test whether the American public is polarized and/or parallel in its assessments of the most important problem. Methods We use compositional time series models and new data on public opinion to test for differences between subgroups. Results We find inconsistent evidence of polarization for some issue areas but not others and remarkably robust evidence of parallel reactions across subgroups to economic and international shocks. Conclusion The U.S. public is remarkably consistent in terms of its assessments of the most important problem and in how subgroups shift their perceptions of issue importance in reaction to changing circumstances.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven Jokinsky & Christine S. Lipsmeyer & Andrew Q. Philips & Laron K. Williams & Guy D. Whitten, 2024. "Look over there. Where? A compositional approach to the modeling of public opinion on the most important problem," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 105(4), pages 913-933, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:105:y:2024:i:4:p:913-933
    DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.13360
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.13360
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ssqu.13360?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kinder, Donald R. & Kiewiet, D. Roderick, 1981. "Sociotropic Politics: The American Case," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 129-161, April.
    2. Martin Bisgaard & Rune Slothuus, 2018. "Partisan Elites as Culprits? How Party Cues Shape Partisan Perceptual Gaps," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 62(2), pages 456-469, April.
    3. Druckman, James N. & Peterson, Erik & Slothuus, Rune, 2013. "How Elite Partisan Polarization Affects Public Opinion Formation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 107(1), pages 57-79, February.
    4. Andrew Q. Philips & Amanda Rutherford & Guy D. Whitten, 2016. "Dynamic Pie: A Strategy for Modeling Trade‐Offs in Compositional Variables over Time," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 60(1), pages 268-283, January.
    5. Andrea Junqueira & Ali Kagalwala & Christine S. Lipsmeyer, 2023. "What's your problem? How issue ownership and partisan discourse influence personal concerns," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 104(1), pages 25-37, January.
    6. Harteveld, Eelco & Dahlberg, Stefan & Kokkonen, Andrej & Van Der Brug, Wouter, 2019. "Gender Differences in Vote Choice: Social Cues and Social Harmony as Heuristics," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(3), pages 1141-1161, July.
    7. Yildirim, Tevfik Murat, 2022. "Rethinking Women's Interests: An Inductive and Intersectional Approach to Defining Women's Policy Priorities," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(3), pages 1240-1257, July.
    8. Roemer, John E., 1998. "Why the poor do not expropriate the rich: an old argument in new garb," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 399-424, December.
    9. Michael J. Hanmer & Kerem Ozan Kalkan, 2013. "Behind the Curve: Clarifying the Best Approach to Calculating Predicted Probabilities and Marginal Effects from Limited Dependent Variable Models," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(1), pages 263-277, January.
    10. Aldrich, John H. & McKelvey, Richard D., 1977. "A Method of Scaling with Applications to the 1968 and 1972 Presidential Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(1), pages 111-130, March.
    11. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    12. Nolan McCarty & Keith T. Poole & Howard Rosenthal, 2008. "Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262633612, December.
    13. Herbert A. Simon, 1996. "The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262691914, December.
    14. Enns, Peter K. & Kellstedt, Paul M., 2008. "Policy Mood and Political Sophistication: Why Everybody Moves Mood," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(3), pages 433-454, July.
    15. Hetherington, Marc J., 2009. "Review Article: Putting Polarization in Perspective," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(2), pages 413-448, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Grewenig, Elisabeth & Lergetporer, Philipp & Werner, Katharina & Woessmann, Ludger, 2020. "Do party positions affect the public's policy preferences? Experimental evidence on support for family policies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 523-543.
    2. Erik Peterson & Shanto Iyengar, 2021. "Partisan Gaps in Political Information and Information‐Seeking Behavior: Motivated Reasoning or Cheerleading?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(1), pages 133-147, January.
    3. Jo Thori Lind & Dominic Rohner, 2017. "Knowledge is Power: A Theory of Information, Income and Welfare Spending," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 84(336), pages 611-646, October.
    4. David Stadelmann & Benno Torgler, 2012. "Bounded Rationality and Voting Decisions Exploring a 160-Year Period," Working Papers 2012.70, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    5. Di Gioacchino, Debora & Sabani, Laura & Tedeschi, Simone, 2014. "Preferences for social protection: Theory and empirics," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 629-644.
    6. Leonie Geyer & Patrick Mellacher, 2024. "Simulating Party Competition in Dynamic Voter Distributions," Graz Economics Papers 2024-19, University of Graz, Department of Economics.
    7. Bekkouche, Yasmine & Cagé, Julia & Dewitte, Edgard, 2022. "The heterogeneous price of a vote: Evidence from multiparty systems, 1993–2017," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    8. Kerwin Kofi Charles & Melvin Stephens Jr., 2013. "Employment, Wages, and Voter Turnout," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 111-143, October.
    9. Maria Gallego & Norman Schofield & Kevin McAlister & Jee Jeon, 2014. "The variable choice set logit model applied to the 2004 Canadian election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 427-463, March.
    10. Erik Snowberg & Justin Wolfers & Eric Zitzewitz, 2011. "How Prediction Markets can Save Event Studies," CAMA Working Papers 2011-07, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    11. Roland Iwan Luttens & Marie-Anne Valfort, 2012. "Voting for Redistribution under Desert-Sensitive Altruism," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(3), pages 881-907, September.
    12. Campante, Filipe R., 2011. "Redistribution in a model of voting and campaign contributions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 646-656, August.
    13. Roemer, John E & Silvestre, Joaquim, 2002. " The "Flypaper Effect" Is Not an Anomaly," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 4(1), pages 1-17.
    14. Campante, Filipe Robin, 2011. "Redistribution in a model of voting and campaign contributions," Scholarly Articles 34310047, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    15. Michael Bang Petersen & Ann Giessing & Jesper Nielsen, 2015. "Physiological Responses and Partisan Bias: Beyond Self-Reported Measures of Party Identification," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(5), pages 1-10, May.
    16. James E. Alt & Amalie Jensen & Horacio Larreguy & David D. Lassen & John Marshall, 2022. "Diffusing Political Concerns: How Unemployment Information Passed between Social Ties Influences Danish Voters," Post-Print hal-03566206, HAL.
    17. Jonathon M. Clegg, 2016. "Perception vs Reality: How Does The British Electorate Evaluate Economic Performance of Incumbent Governments In The Post War Period?," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _143, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    18. Bernasconi, Michele, 2006. "Redistributive taxation in democracies: Evidence on people's satisfaction," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 809-837, December.
    19. Andrea Junqueira & Ali Kagalwala & Christine S. Lipsmeyer, 2023. "What's your problem? How issue ownership and partisan discourse influence personal concerns," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 104(1), pages 25-37, January.
    20. De Donder, Philippe & Gallego, Maria, 2017. "Electoral Competition and Party Positioning," TSE Working Papers 17-760, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:105:y:2024:i:4:p:913-933. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0038-4941 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.