Jonathan Bernstein: “We know, for example, that many voters don’t pay attention to much of what politicians say, and have short memories about what they do notice. Even big deals, such as the major bills Congress is acting on right now, get ignored; indeed, many voters this summer failed to recognize that the current Congress (and President Joe Biden) had delivered anything to them despite the stimulus checks that they had received.”
“Most voters aren’t up for grabs because of partisan polarization. For the rest, fundamentals such as peace and prosperity, or their absence, tend to be extremely important, either directly or mediated through their opinion of the current president. (That is, if things are going well, people tend to like the president, and that drives their votes). All the rest — policy positions, speeches, clever ads, the candidates’ personalities — only matter on the margins. Of course, elections can be won or lost on the margins! During campaigns, it makes sense to maximize everything a candidate can maximize. But most of it just doesn’t matter much.”
“It’s also not as easy as it might seem to succeed by supporting policies that poll strongly. That’s because even high-quality survey research is limited in value by the fact that most of citizens don’t think much about most policy questions, which makes their views on them not very strongly held.”
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