Someone like you: false consensus in perceptions of Democrats and Republicans

ABSTRACT In this paper, I demonstrate false consensus in Americans' perceptions of ordinary party members: the more a person agrees with a statement, the more they believe that in-party members would also agree. I find traces of false consensus for the out-party as well. This pattern in perceptions of ordinary partisans is very similar to the pattern I find in perceptions of politicians' positions. This suggests that false consensus is closely related to another phenomenon in political perceptions: assimilation. I also show that Americans’ perceptions of their in-parties are more correlated with their own opinions than with reality. The results have implications for our understanding of affective polarization, of real-world cueing effects, and of representation.