CONSTITUENT ERRORS IN ASSESSING THEIR SENATORS

We attempt to explain why some constituents are well informed and othe rs are poorly informed about the positions taken by their U.S. Senator s. The acquisition of political information is modeled in a Bayesian f ramework. A constituent with virtually no information about a candidat e assigns him an average position on a liberal/conservative spectrum. As more political information is acquired with more political involvem ent, the constituent shifts her prior toward the politician's actual p osition and thus has a smaller error in assessing positions taken by h er representative. In the Bayesian framework, voters make larger error s in evaluating the records of party mavericks than of typical party m embers. The model is tested using data from the 1982 American National Election Study. Data on the respondent's perceived ideology of their Senators and their socioeconomic characteristics are combined with inf ormation on the Senators' actual ideology, length of time in the Senat e, political party, and candidacy for re-election in 1982. The empiric al analysis provides support for our predictions.