Replication Data for: Correcting Bias in Perceptions of Public Opinion Among American Elected Officials: Results from Two Field Experiments

While concerns about the public’s receptivity to factual information are widespread, much less attention has been paid to the factual receptivity, or lack thereof, of elected officials. Recent survey research has made clear that U.S. legislators and legislative staff systematically misperceive their constituents’ opinions on salient public policies. We report results from two field experiments designed to correct misperceptions of sitting U.S. legislators. The legisla- tors (n=2,346) were invited to access a dashboard of constituent opinion generated using the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Despite extensive outreach efforts, only 11% accessed the information in Study 1 and only 2.3% did so in Study 2. More troubling for democratic norms, legislators who accessed constituent opinion data were no more accurate at perceiving their constituents’ opinions. Our findings underscore the challenges confronting efforts to improve the accuracy of elected officials’ perceptions and suggest that elected officials may resist factual information.