Political perception

PEOPLE are often asked in surveys to place a candidate or party on some scale (i.e., to estimate the candidate's or party's position on an issue like whether military spending ought to be decreased, held at the present ideology scale (e.g., liberal-moderate-conservative). The nonevaluative placement judgment made in response to such a question can be regarded as a political perception, an outcome of the processes of impression management by the candidate or party and impression formation on the part of the citizen. This article describes two theories that have been used in prior analyses, a generalization regarding overall accuracy of percep-tion, and an anomaly from the 1980 presidential election involving per-ception of Senator Edward Kennedy's position on abortion. Finally, an experiment is reported which confirms the most plausible explanation of the anomaly. Two Theories of Political Perception The displacement theory of political perception holds that people are motivated to avoid disagreement with a liked candidate and agreement Abstract This article uses two theories of political perception, displacement theory and political cue.theory, to analyze the abortion issue. Although both theories are supported, neither can account for the anomaly of collective misperception of Ted Kennedy's position. Experimentally manipulating the salience of politics and religion affected perception of Kennedy's position in a way that supported an extended version of political cue theory