2021/09/10 by Jack Bailey · 14 citations
Decision Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Accountability #Context (archaeology) #Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics #Democracy #Economics #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Game Theory and Voting Systems #Geography #Law #Perception #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Positive economics #Priming (agriculture) #Psychology #Social psychology #State (computer science) #Statistics #Survey data collection
paper · open access · doi:10.1093/poq/nfab054
published in Public Opinion Quarterly 85(4), 987-1008 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 2021/09/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Abstract If voters are to hold governments to account for the state of the economy, they must know how it has changed. Indeed, this is a prerequisite for democratic accountability. Yet the perceptions that voters report often show signs of clear partisan bias. At present, we do not know if this bias is real or instead due to priming in political surveys. To test this, I assign subjects at random to either a political or nonpolitical survey. I then record their economic perceptions and compare the results for each group. I show that political surveys do worsen partisan bias, though only among supporters of the incumbent party. Still, much partisan bias remains unexplained, even in the nonpolitical condition. So, while economic perception items remain biased, we can at least be sure that most people respond to them in a similar way no matter the survey context.