More accurate, but no less polarized: comparing the factual beliefs of government officials and the public
Open accessAbstract
Studies of the American public demonstrate that partisans often diverge not only on questions of opinion but also on matters of fact. However, little is known about partisan divergence in factual beliefs among the government officials who make real policy decisions, or how it compares to belief polarization among the public. This letter describes the first systematic comparison of factual belief polarization between the public and government officials, which we conducted using a paired survey approach. The results indicate that political elites are consistently more accurately informed than the public across a wide range of politically contentious facts. However, this increase in accuracy does not translate into reduced factual belief polarization. These findings demonstrate that a more informed political elite does not necessarily mitigate partisan factual disagreement in policy making.
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Democrats and Republicans are divided in their factual beliefs about reality.
“Democrats and Republicans are not only divided in their attitudes (i.e., ideological polarization) and their feelings toward each other (i.e., affective polarization), but also in their factual beliefs about reality.”
From Factual belief polarization between Democrats and Republicans: source or epiphenomenon of ideological and affective polarization? (2024) · cites this paper as Lee et al., 2021
Republicans assume a lower level of defense spending than Democrats.
“and a lower level of defense spending (Lee et al., 2021).”
From Factual belief polarization between Democrats and Republicans: source or epiphenomenon of ideological and affective polarization? (2024) · cites this paper as Lee et al., 2021
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“Secondly, higher levels of education or knowledge, which we expect to observe among elites, are associated with higher levels of attitude-consistent factual beliefs in many partisan factual controversies (for example, Kahan et al. 2017).”
BackgroundPartisan bias in factual beliefs about politics
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Rekker, R., & Harteveld, E. (2024) · Acta Politica · doi:10.1057/s41269-022-00265-4 · Cited by 32 · see citing works
Rekker, R. (2024) · Frontiers in Political Science · doi:10.3389/fpos.2024.1254826 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
- Authors
- Lee, N., Nyhan, B., Reifler, J., & Flynn, D. J.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- Dartmouth College (US)
- University of Exeter (GB)
- Venue
- British Journal of Political Science
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2020-11-24
- Volume
- 51
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 1315-1322
- ISSN
- 0007-1234 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-2112
- OpenAlex
- W3109806600
- Cited by
- 39
- References
- 18
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 16.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified)
- Locations
- British Journal of Political Science (publishedVersion)
- Open Research Exeter (University of Exeter) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
- Keywords
- political elites, government officials, public opinion, factual accuracy, policy making
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