Uncertainty and Political Perceptions

Abstract

While the world of politics is uncertain, previous work, both theoretical and empirical, has largely failed to incorporate this uncertainty into the analysis of public opinion and electoral behavior. In this article we discuss measures designed to elicit the uncertainty survey respondents feel about their political perceptions. These measures exhibit response patterns which are interpretable, substantively interesting, and consistent with a model relating uncertainty to citizen information costs. We also find that variation in respondent uncertainty leads to different models of perception of political figures and speaks to models of the survey response. As a practical matter, our measures can easily be incorporated into existing surveys with no disruption of continuity.