Oscillations in Perceptual Accuracy: How Well Do People Perceive Parties’ Ideological Positions?

Abstract While citizens are sufficiently informed about parties’ ideological stances during elections, we know little about how the perceptual accuracy of party positions evolves beyond the election campaign period. We argue that, during election campaigns, when political information is more readily available, citizens perceive party positions more accurately, but this perceptual accuracy decreases outside of election time. Leveraging the as-if random variation in interview timing in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems dataset across 21 established democracies and the panel data structure of the British Election Study Internet Panel, we show that perceptual accuracy declines post-election and increases during the pre-electoral campaign period. Additional analyses suggest that these fluctuations in accuracy are primarily due to individuals becoming less informed rather than updating their perceptions in response to new information. These findings have important implications for democratic representation.