Heterogeneity in perceptions of national economic conditions

Empirical findings concerning economic voting differ according to the level of analysis employed. A widely accepted explanation for the inconsistency between macro- and micro-level evidence of economic voting is the high degree of random variation that plagues survey data. According to this explanation, aggregation purges individual-level "noise" from mass opinions on policy issues and outcomes. Building on the research of Bartels (1996), we debate the validity of this explanation by demonstrating that public evaluations of the national economy vary systematically with information, media exposure, political attitudes, personal experiences, and demographic characteristics. Furthermore, we show that these sources of subjective heterogeneity produce systematic biases when national economic evaluations are aggregated. These findings challenge a widely accepted notion that because "error" in individual-level measures (or expressions) of preferences is random, the aggregation of these individual measures ensures that they correctly represent the collective preference.