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Reposted by Lior Sheffer

Nathalie Brack @nathaliebrack.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

New paper, out today in @commssustain.nature.com : politicians are far more polarized on climate change than the citizens they represent. Study in 8 countries, with 714 politicians and 18,281 citizens in open access: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

I genuinely think this emerging body of research on perceptual biases of public opinion among elected officials is some of the most important in political science. (There's some democratic theory to be done here as well)

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

We only analyze estimations that politicians make about public opinion, rather than their own opinions or policy choices. But policy choices are widely assumed to be a function of both mechanisms you mention (e.g. in Miller and Stokes' seminal work). They are indeed hard to decouple empirically!

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

There's some fantastic work (Fastenrath and Marx in CPS) showing that some politicians bring up lobbying as a reason to discount strong present public opinion, believing that it will even out when these actors mobilize and opinions crystallize. This is not necessarily equivalent to hedging though.

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

It's true that projection of one's own opinion is a very strong driver of politicians' perceptual errors (Julie Sevenans has excellent work on this). Analysis we've run but is not reported here suggests that hedging and projection do not cancel out - they both distort perceptions independently.

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

We find this across studies, tasks, countries, and issues. A concerning implication of our analysis is that politicians misperceive public opinion the most when it is lopsided, which entails that policy responsiveness would be undersupplied precisely when citizens demand it most. More in the paper!

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

We show that politicians' perceptual errors are primarily an expression of "midpoint hedging", a well-known cognitive quirk, leading them to skew their estimations towards 50% even when real public opinion is far from being evenly split. Hedging accounts for two thirds (!) of politicians' errors./2

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

New preprint: Jack Lucas, @breunig.eurosky.social and I reanalyze 70,470 assessments made by 12,860 politicians about their constituents' public opinion and demographics, sourced from every available published study of elite perceptual accuracy, and our own original data. /1 osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Political Science Research and Methods @psrm.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

🧠 Do politicians misread their constituents' preferences? ➡️Using a new method where politicians draw preference distributions, N Dias, @jacklucas.bsky.social & @liorsheffer.bsky.social show that conservative overestimation is smaller than assumed www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

We only looked at overall L-R ideology here, but other work that looks at the conservative bias across policy issues (@dbroockman.bsky.social and @cskovron.bsky.social in APSR, @jbpilet.bsky.social et al. in APSR, @awhf.bsky.social et al. in APSR) has documented it on both dimensions.

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Our results motivate a reexamination of pervasive arguments and evidence on politicians' inability to correctly gauge public opinion, and point towards domain-general cognitive biases as a central source of elite misperception. Lots more in the paper: cup.org/4kltoyE

cup.org

Beyond the mean: how thinking about the distribution of public opinions reduces politicians’ perceptual errors | Political Science Research and Methods | Cambridge Core

Beyond the mean: how thinking about the distribution of public opinions reduces politicians’ perceptual errors

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Politicians nevertheless exhibit strong psychological projection: they begin building out distributions by anchoring them close to their own attitudes, a pattern that counterbalances conservative over-estimation among left-wing politicians but reinforces it among right-wing politicians. /3

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

We ask 800 Canadian politicians to draw the full distribution of their constituents' preferences. We first replicate the well-documented conservative bias in public opinion perception using point estimates, and then show that its size is cut by a full half when politicians draw distributions /2

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

New and open access, in @psrm.bsky.social: What happens when we make politicians draw distributions? Nic Dias, @jacklucas.bsky.social and I explore whether the large errors politicians make about public opinion are artificially inflated by how researchers ask them to estimate it /1 cup.org/4kltoyE

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Jacob Edenhofer @jacobedenhofer.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

I should also have mentioned this paper by @noamgidron.bsky.social et al. osf.io/preprints/so...

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Noam Gidron @noamgidron.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Who protests against democratic backsliding? A new working paper with Margalit, Sheffer and Yakir examines this issue and finds that people’s conceptions of what democracy means play a crucial role in predicting whether they engage in active opposition to backsliding efforts. osf.io/preprints/so...

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European Journal of Political Research @ejprjournal.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

🆕 What kind of personalities are drawn to politics? 🗳️ This cross-national study across 🇨🇦🇩🇰🇮🇱🇳🇱🇨🇭 explores #Representation and how honesty-humility and other HEXACO personality traits shape people’s ambition to run for office 🧵1/2 buff.ly/xk4qMa3

cambridge.org

Too honest and humble to run for office? Citizens’ personality traits, nascent ambition, and recruitment | European Journal of Political Research | Cambridge Core

Too honest and humble to run for office? Citizens’ personality traits, nascent ambition, and recruitment

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Reposted by Lior Sheffer

Cambridge University Press Political Science & IR @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · 13/10/2025

#OpenAccess from @ejprjournal.bsky.social - Too honest and humble to run for office? Citizens’ personality traits, nascent ambition, and recruitment - cup.org/4ncO4c0 - Marc van de Wardt, P.Bundi, P.J.Loewen, @annerasmussen.bsky.social, @liorsheffer.bsky.social & F.Varone #FirstView

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Our findings shed light on the personality selection funnel into higher-office politics, and help explain resulting leader behaviour patterns. Proud to be part of the team working on this paper, led by Thomas Bergeron, and including Eran Amsalem, Jeroen Joly, and Peter Loewen.

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

High levels of openness to experience, which characterize most politicians exhibit, are only weakly appealing, especially among right-leaning voters. In a conjoint experiment, we find that these effects on leader preference outweigh factors such as age, education, gender, and experience. /3

Figure summarizing AMCEs of different factors used in the Study 3 conjoint experiment reported in the paper

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

We find remarkable consistency across countries and ideologies when citizens choose their party leaders: they are extremely averse to displays of neuroticism, and strongly reward candidates who are conscientious, agreeable, and to a lesser degree extrovert /2

Table describing the Big Five personality traits used in the study

Figure describing overall results from Study 1 described in the paper

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Now in @ispp-pops.bsky.social: what type of personality do citizens want their leaders to have? In a series of studies conducted in Belgium, Canada, and Israel, we present citizens with profiles of potential leaders with different personality configurations drawn using the Big Five traits /1

Screen shot of the title, author list, and abstract of the Political Psychology paper "What Personality Traits do Citizens Want Politicians to Have?"

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Reposted by Lior Sheffer

British Journal of Political Science @bjpols.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

From February 2025 - Do Political Leaders Understand Public Opinion Better than Backbenchers? - cup.org/3CNR4dt - Stefaan Walgrave, Julie Sevenans, Frédéric Varone, @liorsheffer.bsky.social & @breunig.bsky.social #OpenAccess

BJPolS abstract discussing politicians' perceptions of public opinion accuracy regarding leadership performance, featured on a green background with white text.

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Reposted by Lior Sheffer

Dylan Connor @lifechances.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

The most important paper on democratic backsliding I've read this year

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Reposted by Lior Sheffer

Noam Gidron @noamgidron.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

🚨Why do masses support democratic backsliding?🚨 A new @AJPS_Editor paper with Yotam Margalit, @liorsheffer.bsky.social and Itamar Yakir explores this question in the Israeli context. Our findings emphasize the role of leader attachment and affective polarization. doi.org/10.1111/ajps...

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Thanks Lucy! We love the Fastenrath and Marx paper, and figuring out which politicians even benchmark themselves against opinion polling is a priority for us, along with better understanding the inherent tension politicians face between responding to public opinion and working to change it.

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Our findings undermine the idea that leaders possess some unique capacity to 'get' the public. And because they have the most power to shape agendas and policies, their perceptual errors are especially concerning for the kind of representation citizens get in democratic systems. More in the paper!

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

This result holds when we ask politicians to think about the general public and their own party voters; under different definitions of seniority; and even when we specifically look at those politicians who are (incorrectly) singled out by colleagues for being good at understanding public opinion. /3

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

We find that while politicians themselves strongly believe that top politicians - such as party leaders and cabinet ministers - excel at understanding what people want, in reality these senior figures - who were included in our sample of >800 politicians - are just as inaccurate as the rest! /2

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Now in @bjpols.bsky.social: Are leaders really better at reading public opinion? In a large-scale study led by Stefaan Walgrave and Julie Sevenans, we test the assumption that politicians in leadership positions have more accurate knowledge of public opinion than others. /1 doi.org/10.1017/S000...

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Reposted by Lior Sheffer

Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

This paper joins a couple of others demonstrating that politicians have a conservative bias in their expectations of public opinion. This work is hugely illuminative of elite attitudes and so is of vital interest to activists pursuing progressive change

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Reposted by Lior Sheffer

Brad LeVeck @bradleveck.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

Very cool paper! Well worth your time if you study elite decision-making or elections and accountability.

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

Stefaan Walgrave, Karolin Soontjens, Eran Amsalem, Pirmin Bundi, Frédéric Varone, @stefaniebailer.bsky.social, @nathaliebrack.bsky.social, @breunig.bsky.social, Linda Coufalová, Patrick Dumont, @nathaliegiger.bsky.social, @miguelpereira.bsky.social, Mikael Persson, @jbpilet.bsky.social /6

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

@jacklucas.bsky.social, Peter Loewen and I are indebted to our wonderful team of co-authors: /5

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

In the paper, we argue that politicians' theories of voters are very likely consequential for how they campaign, communicate, think about public policy, and represent constituents. We also outline a new research agenda stemming from our findings. Lots more in the paper! /4

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

Only 16% of politicians are "democratic optimists", who see voters as knowledgeable, fair assessors of blame and credit, who care about the long term and society as a whole when voting. Citizens, on the other hand, are equally split between optimism and realism in their views. /3

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

Nearly 75% of all politicians adhere to what we call "democratic realism" - they think that voters are ignorant, short-term focused, egocentric, and vote based on deeply held identities rather than policy positions. This happens in every country we study. /2

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

Now in APSR: What do politicians think about their voters? Fielding face-to-face surveys to 982 sitting politicians in 11 countries, and accompanying surveys of 12,000 citizens, we find that politicians have remarkably consistent - and cynical - theories of voters: /1 doi.org/10.1017/S000...

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 13/03/2024

We also show that politicians with office seeking ambitions are more affectively polarized, potentially explaining why top politicians - those who citizens often take affective cues from - may hold especially high levels of partisan animosity. More on implications in the paper!

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 13/03/2024

We find remarkable variation in politicians' affective polarization, with non-partisan politicians being -less- polarized than citizens, but document higher levels among partisan politicians and extreme ideologues. /2

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 13/03/2024

Now in Political Psychology: Why are some politicians more hostile than others? Do politicians as a group feel more partisan animosity than citizens? @lucasjacklucas and I report results from a study of 850 politicians and 28,500 citizens to provide first answers: /1 doi.org/10.1111/pops.12974

What explains elite affective polarization? Evidence from Canadian politicians

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Reposted by Lior Sheffer

Ayala Panievsky @panievsky.bsky.social · 27/02/2024

Excited to share my new publication in the International Journal of Press/Politics with my brilliant friends Yossi David, @noamgidron.bsky.social & @liorsheffer.bsky.social! Imagined audiences have been studied for decades - but what do we know about imagined journalists? >> shorturl.at/klovF

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 17/01/2024

This paper is the first contribution in what we argue should be a new, comparative research agenda on the causes and consequences of politicians' democratic theories. We are definitely working on that! Much more in the paper: doi.org/10.1111/1475...

doi.org

https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12657

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Lior Sheffer @liorsheffer.bsky.social · 17/01/2024

This is not merely an academic debate: these theories strongly predict politicians' in-office choices, such as how many hours per week they spend on different representational tasks. They also have other potential implications that we discuss. /4

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