The Politics of Continuous Measures

In our hyper-polarized climate, it is often said that partisans determine their policy positions not based on thought and reason but on opposition to the other party. If I’m a Republican and I hear that Nancy Pelosi supports a particular policy, I’ll reflexively take the opposite stance. There is a literature in political science that suggests this is the case, but could it be wrong? In a new paper, “Updating amidst Disagreement: New Experimental Evidence on Partisan Cues”, our very own Will Howell and Anthony Fowler demonstrate that more robust research designs leads to a completely different conclusion. The American public may be more open to deliberative policy positions than we think; they just need to be given the option.