Personal issue importance effects on voters’ perceptual accuracy of party issue positions

The accuracy of voters’ party position perceptions is critical for the functioning of representative democracy, and recent comparative work has shown that voters generally have accurate perceptions of parties’ left-right ideological positions. Yet, we know little about how the left-right results generalize to single issues and how personal issue importance evaluations shape accuracy. Building on existing work on the consequences of issue importance, we argue that voters seek more information and become more accurate in their perceptions of party issue positions on those issues they deem personally important. However, we also posit that this is likely a curvilinear relationship. For highly important issues, voters are more likely to have strong priors and engage in projection effects of assimilation and contrast, limiting their ability to accurately perceive party positions on highly important issues. Using original voter – and expert-level surveys from ten advanced democracies, we show support for our expectations.

选民对政党立场的认知准确性，对于代议制民主的运行至关重要。近期比较政治研究已证实，选民通常能够准确把握各政党的左右翼意识形态立场。然而，学界对这类左右翼立场的认知结果如何推广至单一议题，以及选民对议题重要性的主观评价如何塑造其认知准确性，仍所知甚少。本研究依托现有关于议题重要性影响效应的研究成果，提出核心论点：当选民认为某议题具有个人层面的重要性时，会主动搜寻更多相关信息，从而对政党在该议题上的立场形成更准确的认知。但我们同时认为，这一关联可能呈现曲线关系：对于极高重要性的议题，选民往往已存在较强的先验认知，并易陷入同化与对比类的投射效应，这会限制其准确判断政党在该类议题上立场的能力。本研究基于覆盖十个发达民主国家的原创选民与专家层级调查数据，验证了上述理论预期。