UNCERTAINTY AND POLITICAL PERCEPTIONS

While the world of politics is uncertain, previous work, both theoreti cal and empirical, has largely failed to incorporate this uncertainty into the analysis of public opinion and electoral behavior. In this ar ticle we discuss measures designed to elicit the uncertainty survey re spondents feel about their political perceptions. These measures exhib it response patterns which are interpretable, substantively interestin g, and consistent with a model relating uncertainty to citizen informa tion costs. We also find that variation in respondent uncertainty lead s to different models of perception of political figures and speaks to models of the survey response. As a practical matter, our measures ca n easily be incorporated into existing surveys with no disruption of c ontinuity.