News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymme... by bsder on Thursday October 08, 2015 @05:40PM (#10356503)
It's kind of fascinating that the liberal assessments seem to reflect reality much more closely.

Why?

Conservative politicians don't have a good reason to be wrong. In fact, it's quite the opposite, the better at estimating who your constituents you are, the more likely you are to be reelected.

I'd guess probably error bias. As a conservative, if you overestimate the conservatism of your district, you're not likely to lose many votes (especially in a gerrymandered district). Whereas, if you overestimate the liberalism of your districts, the conservative element will punish you horribly.

Whereas, as a liberal, you have to be more in tune to a broad spectrum of issues in both directions or a challenger can carve off a chunk of your votes.

Re:What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymme... by SteveLAnderson on Thursday October 08, 2015 @06:18PM (#10356748)
I think you make an interesting claim in your comment - that right wing voters are more likely than left wing voters to vote against (ie, punish) someone. I agree with you, since in my experience right wingers are more reactionary than left wingers, but I wonder if there's any data on that.
Re:What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymme... by eli_gottlieb on Friday October 09, 2015 @10:45AM (#10360322)
It's not that right-wingers are innately more reactive than left-wing voters. It's that left-wing voters are only now getting genuinely angry about being told, for the past four decades, to just shut up and take whatever the Establishment gives us.

Consider the current two Presidential primaries. Among the Republican Party, there's a contest to see who's the most conservative, and candidates are competing to come up with a platform that appeals to the party base. Among the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton is presumed to be the obvious, inevitable, entitled winner, and so there's a deliberate attempt to suppress actual competition for the nomination, most especially competition from the insurgent left-populist Bernie Sanders.

Re:What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: Asymme... by SteveLAnderson on Friday October 09, 2015 @12:41PM (#10361328)
I do think that right wing voters are more reactive. They tend to see/hear something, and that something becomes the most important thing. That's why Rep. McCarthy's statement on the Benghazi hearing resulted in him losing his opportunity to become speaker. If that had happened 6 months ago, it wouldn't have been a problem because the right wingers would have moved on to something else.

Left wing voters more often are in it for the long haul. They cringe when someone says something stupid, but they don't react with pitchforks and torches.

That's why there's never been a left wing Rush. It just doesn't work.