UCLA

My work is on the importance of elite rhetoric in shaping public opinion despite the fact that party identification operates as an efficient cue for most voters. With a representative sample of respondents, nine experiments, five different elite cues, and four different issues, I show that the role of elite rhetoric on public opinion is more than just simple cueing. Elites matter to public opinion, but in a more dramatic way than we recognize. I show consistently across all experiments that elites must justify their issue positions with coherent content in order to generate support, and in this way, elites can amplify the role that party identification has on shaping attitudes about issues. Lastly, when elites use emotional stories to personalize an issue, they are able to reach across party lines and generate support among out-party members. These justifications, if delivered as a story, can also lead to more favorable evaluations of the elites delivering the justification.

But it’s not that simple. While elites can lead opinion in more ways than we previously realized, they are also subject to more constraints than we understood. To demonstrate this, I test the alternative hypothesis that elites can say anything and voters will blindly follow. I show that elites cannot give any justification and expect voters to support their issue positions; they must provide coherent reasons to generate support. Elites also cannot gain popular support for wholly undesirable policies. Because elites are constrained by justifications and issues, their ability to shape public opinion is more limited than previously characterized.