It May Not Seem That Way, but Politicians Often Do What Voters Want

This article debunks the myth that politicians are always out for their own benefit at the expense of their constituents. However we may feel about our particular representative, he or she is fully aware of the demographics of their district and the issues foremost in the minds of their residents. While they cannot always please them, they do try to satisfy the majority that reside in their district.

Politicians who do things that voters don’t want, end up out of office. But there is one kind of circumstance that occurs where politicians advocate for issues about which most of their constituents do not support. When a particular group or individual can help the politician or who the politician favors wants something and the rest of the constituents don’t care, that politician will be an advocate.

Let's just say that politicians do what the voters who put them in place want. If the districts are gerrymandered, it may not be doing what the majority wants, only what the majority who hold the power wants. And politicians are perfectly willing to distract people with one issue and quietly slip in all sorts of things that are detrimental while the population is up in arms over gay wedding cakes. In those cases, it is more likely that politicians are doing what donors want (look up ALEC), and most of the time voters are not even aware anything happened. I know people who were unaware that their cost of home ownership went up in the last "tax cut" because we live in a high cost of living state. And I know others who have no idea what the EPA has been approving for their air and water. And of course, a "liberal" state can be 51% liberal, and a "conservative" state 51% conservative, which means politicians are likely only giving half the people what they want and lining the other half up against the wall.

Polls tend to ask what people think of politicians and whether they are responsive to people such as themselves. That is a counterproductive question if asked in isolation from asking what people think of their own representatives. While people strongly tend to disavow faith in politicians, they strongly like their own, which is why they reelect them over and over. It's essentially like the issue of "term limits": we have term limits. They're called elections. What the people are saying who back "term limits" is that I trust myself to pick a good official, but I do not trust you to do the same. Trump's election was an effect of already existing problems the political and chattering classes were not paying attention to, not their cause, even though his tenure in office has hugely exacerbated our problems. Though I expected Clinton to win and voted for her, my pre-election worry was that the day after the election she and her supporters would go to sleep and ignore all the Trump voters' grievances, both real and imagined. Human beings have evolved over the eons to focus on today's problems: where will I get my next meal and how can I protect my family. Next year did not exist for practical purposes, not even next week. Slowly humans learned about the relationship of seasons to food supply and protection, especially when we moved into the temperate zones. With the development of agriculture our time horizons expanded. However, our brains are still largely geared for tomorrow.

The methodology in this article reminds me of what was lampooned in The Journal of Irreproducible Results as “the data enrichment method.” Decide in advance what you want to prove; ignore all the direct evidence against your hypothesis; and instead harvest a bunch of unrelated indirect measures, tie them together with tenuous generalizations, and declare that you've proved your point.

Seems to me that this data can be explained in other than liberal and conservative ways. For example, the heavier use of sales tax can be attributed to its ease of collection and its unobtrusive character........a penny here, a penny there. Pretty soon you are talking real money. As for welfare benefits, a statistic seldom mentioned is that poor people don't turn out to the polls in nearly the same number as the middle class and wealthy. In short the poor (and in many cases Blacks) are not the politician's constituents.

Well that's sort of reassuring (responsive politicians) and depresssing (the selfish attitudes they are responding to) at the same time.

"minority congresswomen"? They are Democrats, and Democrats are the majority party in the House of Representatives. They are majority congresswomen.

Another example of people working in academia not knowing how the real world operates. I’m not anti “book learning” but living within the confines of a university is not living in the real world.

How can you publish an article with this title and not even address the famous 2014 Princeton study that showed no correlation between voter preferences and policy adoption? (https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf) Yes, more conservative states will have more conservative policies, and more liberal states will have more liberal policies - but the policies that are enacted all still remain within a narrow Overton window of what's acceptable to the ruling class. If the people want one thing and the powers that be want another, the powers that be will win out. Especially on the much more significant federal level. Stop gaslighting your readers.

If politicians do what their constituents want, then how come do we have licentious gun laws...contrary to the majority's wish, the elimination of this 'cowboy mentality' of 'shooting first and only then asking questions', in resolving disputes? Are you including republicans here, bought by their N.R.A. donors?

Texas does not have an income tax, therefore tax revenue comes from real and personal property taxes, sales taxes, and fees. Texas also has one of the lowest per capita tax burdens of the 50 states. Welfare benefits are always higher in liberal enclaves for the simple reason liberals philosophically are inclined to tax others to support another, which reinforces and creates dependence upon the state. The latest round of federal budget negotiations proved up that both liberal parties, the republican and the deomcrat, love massive debt and deficit spending. Both love them because the voters are willfully ignorant and just want "stuff" and more of it. My belief is that I will never vote to re-elect anyone. Period. Simpson-Bowles should have been passed into law. I think we are doomed at this point. We have a knuckle head in the White House and a Congress being led by four antisemitic, American hating people who are protected from critical review because of their skin color and gender. The media is to blame only in part. The mushy headed voters are the main culprits.

Nonsense. Most politicians respond to their average constituents only when their wealthy donors don’t care about the issue or are divided. I worked in Congress. I know how the game is played. Don’t try to gaslight me.

Politicians do what voters want - as long as it does not conflict with the wishes of their donors... Recommended read "In Opposing Tax Plan, Schumer Breaks With Party" https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/washington/30schumer.html And to this day, Schumer succeeded to have hedge fund managers pay lower income taxes then you and me Hardly what voters want - but his donors do

Polls tend to ask what people think of politicians and whether they are responsive to people such as themselves. That is a counterproductive question if asked in isolation from asking what people think of their own representatives. While people strongly tend to disavow faith in politicians, they strongly like their own, which is why they reelect them over and over. It's essentially like the issue of "term limits": we have term limits. They're called elections. What the people are saying who back "term limits" is that I trust myself to pick a good official, but I do not trust you to do the same. Trump's election was an effect of already existing problems the political and chattering classes were not paying attention to, not their cause, even though his tenure in office has hugely exacerbated our problems. Though I expected Clinton to win and voted for her, my pre-election worry was that the day after the election she and her supporters would go to sleep and ignore all the Trump voters' grievances, both real and imagined. Human beings have evolved over the eons to focus on today's problems: where will I get my next meal and how can I protect my family. Next year did not exist for practical purposes, not even next week. Slowly humans learned about the relationship of seasons to food supply and protection, especially when we moved into the temperate zones. With the development of agriculture our time horizons expanded. However, our brains are still largely geared for tomorrow.

Most political decisions which have a major impact on voter's lives are made in semi-secrecy without voter input. Politicians respond to donors and supporters at all levels of government, and the big-ticket items rarely emerge from voter support. For some examples, we have not voted to support a trillion dollar military/industrial complex and its uses throughout the world, a billion dollar surveillance/police/prison industrial complex that incarcerates over 2 million people, tax breaks for the wealthy, or the current crop of political candidates. Many more examples at state and local levels could be cited. It is naive to think that, at least in recent times, voters have much control over the things that count the most.

"Cities that are more conservative tend to have larger shares of tax revenue generated by sales taxes, which are more regressive." Perhaps another view is that more liberal cities are just far more expensive to live in, so one would expect that property tax revenue collected to be much higher. Given that it's much more expensive to live in NYC (and many other liberal cities), it seems only natural that benefits be higher.

Nor does this take into account that a large part of the electorate does not vote and the Republicans are making it more and more difficult for them to vote. What this article suggests is really that the part of the electorate that does vote is well represented and yet the daily newspapers suggest the opposite. Most people want the ACA to remain in effect and yet the ruling majority has relentlessly weakened it. Why are they not responding to the wishes of the electorate there? There are several issues that reveal the same trend. As an activist I watched repeatedly politicians respond more to their big money donors than they do to their constituents. They reek of contempt for the electorate, convinced that they can buy the votes they need to stay in office thorough a media that has long since ceased to be anything approximating fair and balanced.

Every congressional representative must accept emails and phone calls from their constituents. Their contact form can be accessed by googling their respective websites. Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must accept contacts from the entire country. American citizens have a right to complain about their government and leaders. They should complain directly to the people who can do something about their complaints.

Good news for democracy on the state (& local?) levels, but what about the federal level? This is where the great divisions and tribalism make politics & governing MUCH more challenging.

Politicians are our employees. They're supposed to do what we, the employers and the payers of their salaries, want them to do, up to a point. If we want them to do something crazy or unreasonable they have an obligation to exercise their better judgment, which is also something that we elected them to do, and override what is being demanded of them even though they may face the consequences at the polls.

Voters support the candidate[s] whose views generally, if not in all cases, coincide with theirs. As such, from a practical standpoint, politicians have to the amalgam of interests of a majority of their constituency. If they don't they're looking for a new job. Those whose views don't comport with the winners', gear up for the next election. The results of the Congressional elections of 2016, validate that reality as wells as the democratic foundations of our Constitutional systems. Is the system perfect? No. But, until some perfect person or class shows up, I suggest that a system premised upon the people's right to be wrong is the best way to go.

Two points: first of all if this were true, how do the authors account for the discrepancy between voters’ support for better gun regulation and politicians’ failure to enact such policies? Second, in some states such as Oregon, the “ballot initiative” has become a cheap copout alternative to politicians who fear political or economic backlash even in the face of voter support for certain initiatives.

I’m finding it difficult to reconcile the (relative) optimism of the authors with the data from the exhaustive new study by Kalla and Porter they cite in their article. Extend that to other political power centers as well: Mitch McConnell doesn’t even care what other senators want, including Republican senators.

This is egregiously bad data science. There are plenty of surveys on what voters want that would provide better data (you link to an article that shows their elected officials don't care). Compare their answers with actual policies that were passed. You're looking at 2 limited variables, operating on assumptions, then drawing dramatically broad conclusions. You don't normalize for differences in cost of living, income distributions, or the relative spending between different types of programs. It's a sliver of a view and there's way more and better data out there.

Sometimes promises are made based on polling data but they’re bad policy or short sighted. I’m frequently not as worried about the promises politicians break as the ones they keep. Leadership is required as part of the mix.

We can have democratic match-ups of public opinion and public policy without having democracy, any relatively direct causal path from opinion to policy. Both opinion and policy follow diffusion patterns, such that they are more likely than not to arrive at a similar outcome. Policy in American states follows patterns of influential (sometimes ideological) national groups, partisan leadership and similarity, and administrative leadership by large states. Shifts in opinion can track to demographic and partisan composition and leadership. On, say, auto pollution controls, all it takes is one big leader state, California, to behave democratically, and a host of follower states can match policy to state opinion without having to actually know anything about state opinion.

The fact that people are very skeptical about whether their elected officials care about what their constituents want can cause most voters to give up in disgust, or never even attempt to express their wishes to their representatives. Absent input from us, elected officials are going to vote in ways that are politically or financially expedient. It’s a vicious cycle. Lawmakers are not mind readers. If we hope to get them to act on our behalf, we must let them know what we want and need by calling, writing, and emailing their offices. I believe they are influenced by huge voter outpourings. So to be fair, if we want to hold them accountable, we must tell what we want. If they choose to ignore us, it should be at their peril.

Why can't the NYT use the more apposite term "regressive" instead of "conservative." First, it is more accurate, in that describes a tendency to return to mores and ideas such as paternalism, feudalism, superstition and religion that were more widespread in the past than they are today. They are not resistant to change -- they want change in the direction of going backward in time. Second, I suspect that the lines in the graphs in the article were made using what is called "linear regression." It is clear where the regressive end of these lines lies.

If the title of this article is correct, why are the roads in such poor condition- especially where winters are so harsh? What are governments ie local, state, federal, waiting for? Ugh!

No, it's not quite "what voters want," but what the politician determines a majority of the voters want, throwing away the wants and needs of the minority. The tyranny of the majority basically excludes anyone else. Representative democracy is not about total exclusion, either/or, my way or no way; it may be about primary focus, but that is not exclusive focus.

Would that were the case here in PA where we (Fair Districts PA) are trying to create an independent citizens commission to handle redistricting and end our dubious reputation as one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation Last session our House bill to do just that was co-sponsored by 110 members of our (bloated) 203-member House. That’s a majority. But the bill was sent to committees chaired by opponents, gutted and replaced with hostile language and never got a vote. Today, we’ve collected over 65,000 petition signatures for reform, over 300 towns and 20 counties have passed resolutions urging reform, and state media have run over 230 editorials and op-Ed’s, nearly all backing reform. A state poll shows 64% of Pennsylvanians support change. But a few powerful legislative leaders thrive on gerrymandering and the power and influence it gives them and the interests that support them. School funding inequality thrives, we are the only US state without an extraction tax, we have too much lead in our water and too much pollution in our air and a bloated gerrymandered legislature where nearly 50% run unopposed, can retire with a pension at 50 and receive unlimited gifts, and our $7.25 minimum wage hasn’t changed in a decade. Responsive? Not here!

The issue with using city statistics, is that they are creatures of their State. Their taxation powers are delimited by their State. If Republican controlled legislatures determine that Democratic cities only have access to property and sales tax revenue, then that’s what they’ll use. As for TANF benefits, I’d venture to guess that they are “more generous” in places with high costs of living, which also tend to be more Democratic. An interesting topic that is sadly undermined by spurious datasets... :/

There may be some truth to this on a local level. Other studies show that Congress does what rich donors and lobbyists tell them to.

It is true that sales taxes are, on balance, more regressive than other forms of taxation, but it is simplistic to make a blanket statement about sales taxes that disregards the differences among them. A sales tax can be less regressive if, for example, it exempts food or cheaper articles of clothing (as in some states). Conversely, income taxes can be more or less progressive, depending on whether the rate is flat or graduated, on the amount of the exemption per individual or household, and on the presence or absence of other provisions (such as a deduction or credit for low-income households or rent payers).

Right. If you vote in blocs, politicians will cater to your needs. I feel like I'm in an alternate universe where common sense was never discovered.

There are lies, white lies and statistics. As far as the magnitude of political decisions made, the banker bail out in the face of an 80% public (fierce) opposition renders this presentation flimsy and finally misleading. We must get money out of politics.

According to data in Jacob Hacker's book, "Winner-Take-All Politics," it's the rich voters politicians listen to.

Amazing! An entire column claiming that politicians do what their voters want, but not a single word about how conservative White districts and Southern states demand that their politicians do everything they can to keep Black people down. Yes, TANF funds drop in "conservative" states. But what's left out is that those states dominated by conservative Whites do everything they can to disadvantage their Black population. As an example, look at all the Southern states that would have overwhelmingly benefited their entire population by signing onto the ACA, but refused to participate. Why? Because the ACA would have strongly benefited Blacks and immigrants, and White politicians were having none of that. Just as when the New Deal came out, Southern White politicians demanded that "domestic workers," overwhelmingly Black, would not be included in Social Security. It's not about a continuum of conservative to liberal, but a manifestation of the old Slave South continuing its centuries-long ways.

It is gratifying to see an analysis like this in the Times. Thank you.

Politicians reflect what is going on in the country. If DC is chaotic that means the country at large is. Many won't like to hear that but it's true.

Same old message from the mainstream corporate media, everything is fine, don't challenge those in power because it is never going to get any better. By now it is well known that there are a plethora of studies that show the U.S. does not operate as a democracy. Remember the Princeton study that looked at 20 years of policymaking and found that most of the population has no effect on policy whatsoever. Demand better.

The carried interest exemption, tax cuts heavily biased to favor the wealthy, trade policies aimed at increasing corporate profits at the expense of workers' incomes . . . politicians might not be able to hide their motives on something as obvious to every voter as the local sales tax, but on most issues that involve taxing and spending they find ways to twist the language into indecipherable knots to make it sound not only defensible, but even urgent, to line the pockets of the donor class.

It is a myth that politicians do not care what voters want. That may be the only thing about which they care. You don’t make your case by showing why you are right. You make your case by showing how many voters think you are right. The key then is become a voter and to sell your case to other voters. Internet polls are not much of a case. The most important rule: If you don’t vote, you don’t matter.