Inferences Made Easy

• Author: Geoffrey Sheagley,Logan Dancey
• Published date: 01 September 2016
• Date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X16630378
• Subject Matter: Articles

American Politics Research

2016, Vol. 44(5) 844 –874

© The Author(s) 2016

Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1532673X16630378

apr.sagepub.com

Article

Inferences Made

Easy: Partisan Voting

in Congress, Voter

Awareness, and Senator

Approval

Logan Dancey1 and Geoffrey Sheagley2

Abstract

This article investigates whether constituents are able to accurately

infer their senators’ votes when the senator frequently votes against the

party line. We find that when senators repeatedly vote against the party

line, constituents’ ability to correctly identify their senators’ votes drops

precipitously while levels of misinformation rise. We then show that citizens

represented by senators who tend to vote against the party line are also

less able to connect their policy positions with their evaluations of those

senators. These findings indicate that there is substantial variation across

senators in the ability of their constituents to hold them accountable for

their votes while in office. Constituents simply know less about the positions

taken by moderate senators and have a harder time aligning their levels of

policy agreement with a senator with their evaluation of that senator if she

frequently votes against her party.

Keywords

senator approval, party cues, political knowledge, party unity

1Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA

2University of Minnesota Duluth, USA

Corresponding Author:

Logan Dancey, Wesleyan University, 238 Church Street, Middletown, CT 06459, USA.

Email: ldancey@wesleyan.edu

630378APRXXX10.1177/1532673X16630378American Politics ResearchDancey and Sheagley

research-article2016

Dancey and Sheagley 845

Introduction

Whether or not voters have the information necessary to hold politicians

accountable is the source of extensive scholarly attention and debate. For vot-

ers to hold elected officials accountable for the positions they take, voters

must know, or at least be able to infer, what those positions are in the first

place. Scholars have recently begun a renewed effort to understand how

much constituents know about their representatives’ and senators’ positions

on specific votes (Ansolabehere & Jones, 2010; Barabas, Pollock, & Wachtel,

2012; Dancey & Sheagley, 2013; Fortunato & Stevenson, 2014; Jones, 2011,

2013; Mitchell, 2009; Wilson, 2012). Although this question has received

scholarly attention in the past (e.g., Alvarez & Gronke, 1996; Hutchings,

2001; Wilson & Gronke, 2000; Wolpert & Gimpel, 1997), new survey ques-

tions in the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) have

facilitated more in-depth analysis in recent years. Such analysis is important

because if we believe elected officials should be held accountable for the

positions they take in office, then we should desire to know if citizens possess

the requisite information to hold their leaders accountable.

The recent strain of research demonstrates that citizens hold relatively

accurate perceptions of their representatives’ and senators’ votes

(Ansolabehere & Jones, 2010) and use these perceptions to hold legislators

accountable (Ansolabehere & Jones, 2010; Jones, 2011, 2013). Missing from

this research, however, is an assessment of whether, and to what extent, this

accountability varies across senators. Put differently, is there systematic vari-

ation in how much constituents know about their senators’ votes that can be

explained by the characteristics of the senators themselves?

One potentially important senator-level characteristic that could affect over-

all levels of constituent awareness is the frequency with which a given senator

votes with his or her party on high-profile votes. For instance, there is evidence

that voters have less accurate, and in many cases inaccurate, perceptions of their

legislators’ positions when they deviate from the party line (Ansolabehere &

Jones, 2010; Dancey & Sheagley, 2013). What we do not know, however, is how

a record of consistently deviating from the party line affects overall levels of

constituent knowledge. In other words, when a senator frequently votes against

her party (e.g., former senator Olympia Snowe [R-ME]), do constituents simply

know less about her votes in the aggregate or do such senators develop a reputa-

tion for moderation that voters can rely on to make accurate inferences about

their votes (on the latter point, see Fortunato & Stevenson, 2014)?

We rely on the 2006 CCES to study how variation in senators’ adherence

to the party line shapes the accuracy of inferences constituents make about