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Heuristics Behaving Badly: Party Cues and Voter Knowledge

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  • Logan Dancey
  • Geoffrey Sheagley

Abstract

Party cues provide citizens with low‐cost information about their representatives’ policy positions. But what happens when elected officials deviate from the party line? Relying on the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), we examine citizens’ knowledge of their senators’ positions on seven high‐profile roll‐call votes. We find that although politically interested citizens are the group most likely to know their senator's position when she votes with the party, they are also the group most likely to incorrectly identify their senator's position when she votes against her party. The results indicate that when heuristics “go bad,” it is the norm for the most attentive segment of the public to become the most misinformed, revealing an important drawback to heuristic use.

Suggested Citation

  • Logan Dancey & Geoffrey Sheagley, 2013. "Heuristics Behaving Badly: Party Cues and Voter Knowledge," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(2), pages 312-325, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:57:y:2013:i:2:p:312-325
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2012.00621.x
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    Cited by:

    1. Aaron R Kaufman & Eitan D Hersh, 2020. "The political consequences of opioid overdoses," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(8), pages 1-10, August.
    2. Julia Partheymüller & Sylvia Kritzinger & Carolina Plescia, 2022. "Misinformedness about the European Union and the Preference to Vote to Leave or Remain," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(5), pages 1449-1469, September.
    3. John Kuk & Deborah Seligsohn & Jiakun Jack Zhang, 2022. "The partisan divide in U.S. congressional communications after the China shock," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(3), pages 494-526, July.
    4. Maxime Walder & Oliver Strijbis, 2022. "Negative Party Identification and the Use of Party Cues in the Direct Democratic Context," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(4), pages 325-335.

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