Co-authored Paper Presentation @ St. Pete Beach, Florida 2023 SPSA

Party Misperception, Party-voter Incongruence and Political Distrust

The paper investigates how citizens’ misperception of party positions influences the perceived congruence between ideological preferences and positions of parties’ ideological position. We use a voter-level longitudinal data in the British Election Study in conjunction with data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES). We take advantage of the panel structure of our data set and directly test two hypotheses relating to voters’ misperception of party positions relates to subjectively perceived incongruence, and the effect of perceived and actual incongruence on trust and satisfaction with politics. From our analysis, misperception about UK parties increases both perceived and actual incongruence between voters and parties, with those with higher perceptional gaps demonstrating higher party-voter inconsistency. Furthermore, we found that a higher level of misperception about the party’s position contributes to a more high level of perceived inconsistent with voters’ political trust and satisfaction. Regression on Party-voters’ political satisfaction and trust with controls by mainstream parties deteriorates citizens’ satisfaction with democracy.

Session: Comparative Political Behavior and Electoral Systems | Post-Brexit UK Politics

Time: 13 Jan 3:30pm-4:50pm

Room: Snowy Egret

Documents: paper