Trump and the Shifting Meaning of “Conservative”: Using Activists’ Pairwise Comparisons to Measure Politicians’ Perceived Ideologies
DANIEL J. HOPKINS, HANS NOEL
American Political Science Review1/17/2022·DOI·Read paper
Abstract
Although prior scholarship has made considerable progress in measuring politicians’ positions, it has only rarely considered voters’ or activists’perceptionsof those positions. Here, we present a novel measure of U.S. senators’ perceived ideologies derived from 9,030 pairwise comparisons elicited from party activists in three 2016 YouGov surveys. By focusing on activists, we study a most-likely case for perceiving within-party ideological distinctions. We also gain empirical leverage from Donald Trump’s nomination and heterodox positions on some issues. Our measure of perceived ideology is correlated withnominatebut differs in informative ways: senators with very conservative voting records were sometimes perceived as less conservative if they did not support Trump. A confirmatory test shows these trends extended into 2021. Even among activists, perceived ideology appears to be anchored by prominent people as well as policy positions.
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