Anne Rasmussen
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annerasmussen.bsky.social
Anne Rasmussen
@annerasmussen.bsky.social

Prof of Pol Science @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social
University of Copenhagen. Lobbying | Political Representation | Public Opinion & Policy | Gender | Social Media | EIC @igajournal.bsky.social | PI ADVODID ERC Grant |ECPR ExecComm
https://annerasmussen.eu .. more

Political science 42%
Business 20%
Pinned
Delighted that @gregoryeady.bsky.social and my paper "Gendered Perceptions and the Costs of Political Toxicity: Experimental Evidence from Politicians and Citizens in Four Democracies" is now online @apsrjournal.bsky.social (Open access)

More in this [1/14]

Reposted by Anne Rasmussen

Methods don’t make meaning. Theory does.

Better methods won’t eradicate the slot machine.

Put the tools to the use of theory.

Thanks to @lseimpactblog.bsky.social for featuring my post.
blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...
Quantitative political science shouldn’t favour tools over meaning - Impact of Social Sciences
Has the fetishization of quantitative tools obscured the wider context and meaning of in political science?
blogs.lse.ac.uk
🆕 What kind of personalities are drawn to politics? 🗳️
This cross-national study across 🇨🇦🇩🇰🇮🇱🇳🇱🇨🇭 explores #Representation and how honesty-humility and other HEXACO personality traits shape people’s ambition to run for office 🧵1/2

buff.ly/xk4qMa3
Too honest and humble to run for office? Citizens’ personality traits, nascent ambition, and recruitment | European Journal of Political Research | Cambridge Core
Too honest and humble to run for office? Citizens’ personality traits, nascent ambition, and recruitment
www.cambridge.org

Reposted by Anne Rasmussen

#OpenAccess from @ejprjournal.bsky.social -

Too honest and humble to run for office? Citizens’ personality traits, nascent ambition, and recruitment - https://cup.org/4ncO4c0

- Marc van de Wardt, P.Bundi, P.J.Loewen, @annerasmussen.bsky.social, @liorsheffer.bsky.social & F.Varone

#FirstView
Politicians don’t just care how many people hold an opinion — they care how good that opinion is. In our new (open-access) article in West European Politics, based on survey data from 900+ politicians across 11 countries, we show: quality > quantity. Read more: doi.org/10.1080/0140...

Already congratulated you but many (!) congrats here too. Really happy this happened 👏 🕺well-deserved!

@fgenovese.bsky.social ...especially because we know that media salience is associated with improvements in policy representation more generally (judged based on opinion-policy congruence) and it's likely it could also affect perceptions of public opinion ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

@fgenovese.bsky.social We have issues that vary in perceived salience according to the representatives but do not have data on their media consumption patterns. This probably would not offset the effect of self-projection but media consumption would be very relevant to examine in future research

Bottom line:

Politicians’ perceptions of public opinion appear more closely linked to who they are than to who they talk to

Full paper here: 🔗 doi.org/10.1086/734528

10/10
Sources of Elected Representatives’ (Mis)Perceptions of Public Opinion: The Role of Self-Projection and Interest Groups | The Journal of Politics
Scholars question the effectiveness of representation, suggesting politicians often misperceive public opinion. We explore the magnitude and potential drivers of misperceptions by comparing actual pub...
doi.org

For democracy, this is both worrying and reassuring:
⚠️Worrying, because many politicians soften simply see the public as a mirror of themselves.
✅Reassuring, because centrist politicians—often in government—should be more likely to get majority opinion right.

9/10

Taken together:
-Misperceptions are widespread
-They are most strongly associated with self-projection - Interest groups play a more modest, indirect role

This suggests that getting representation “right” depends more on curbing projection than on changing group contacts

8/10

A mediation analysis suggests why:

If interest groups matter, their influence is mostly indirect—by shaping politicians’ own views, which in turn are associated with their (biased) perceptions of citizens.

7/10

What about interest groups?

Links to business groups are associated with less accurate perceptions—but not with systematic bias

Interactions with citizen groups show little connection to either accuracy or bias of perceptions

So, interest groups likely matter less than often feared.

6/10

Self-projection matters a lot:

Politicians’ estimates move systematically toward their own views:
(1)Right-wing politicians think the public is more right-wing.
(2) Left-wing politicians think the public is more left-wing.

“False consensus” in action.

5/10

We consider a comprehensive set of indicators capturing
- information from
- contact with, and
- (various forms of) engagement in interest groups.

And we measure at both the accuracy of and ideological bias in perceptions of public opinion

4/10

We then test two main factors which could be linked to these misperceptions:

(1) Self-projection – politicians assume the public thinks like they do.
(2) Interest groups – ties to business or citizen groups correlate with perceptions.

3/10

We compare what citizens actually think on 5 salient policy issues (immigration, safety, healthcare, culture, environment) with politicians’ estimates

On average, politicians misestimate support by 22 percentage points (!).

BUT biases vary a lot (!) by issue & country.

2/10
🚨 New paper in @thejop.bsky.social

Why do politicians often misperceive what citizens' policy positions are?

@simonotjes.bsky.social and I study ~10,000 estimates of public opinion by politicians in Denmark & the Netherlands to uncover the sources of these (mis)perceptions

Thread 🧵1/10
How do governments mobilise public opinion in times of uncertainty? Do they gauche public opinion systematically across policy domains or unevenly depending on the issue ?🧵

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Government polling in times of crises: when capacity meets incentives
How do governments mobilise public opinion in times of crises? While recent research examines the factors that determine the intensity of government polling at different points in the electoral cyc...
www.tandfonline.com

Many congrats @alexanderfurnas.com et al. :-)

Many congrats to you & not least IE (!) Catherine

Many (!) congrats! Very happy to read this

Stort(!) tillykke Jacob! Glad på dine vegne 🕺🙌

Stort tillykke!!

Reposted by Anne Rasmussen

Yesterday at #ecprgc25 👇

💡 Keynote speech by Margaritis Schinas, Vice President of the European Commission

📚 Publishing session @annerasmussen.bsky.social, @irobo.bsky.social, @mlorimer.bsky.social, @alessandronai.bsky.social, @steven-vanhauwaert.bsky.social

⭐ Thanks to everyone who participated!

Reposted by Anne Rasmussen

In January 2026, Cambridge University Press joins forces with ECPR to publish the European Journal of Political Research, European Political Science, the European Political Science Review and the Political Data Yearbook.

Find out more - cup.org/3UG4RIB

#ecprgc25
Did you ever wonder why governments don’t do more to counteract wealth inequality? In our new @worldpolitics.bsky.social article, we seek to answer this question, studying the electoral politics of inheritance taxation muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl... 1/n
Project MUSE - Why is it so Hard to Counteract Wealth Inequality? Evidence from the United Kingdom
muse.jhu.edu

Reposted by Alessandro Nai

Headed to #ecprgc25? 🇬🇷☀️📝💻

Please join us for this roundtable on open science featuring editors from @prxjournal.bsky.social @mlorimer.bsky.social @stevenhauwert & from @ejprjournal.bsky.social @alessandronai.bsky.social @isabelleborucki

The roundtable doesn’t overlap with any research panels 👏
📢 One week to go #ecprgc25

📊 Open Science in Political Research with @prxjournal.bsky.social & EJPR
📆 Thursday 28th August
⏰ 13:30 – 15:15 EEST
📌 Law Building, Floor: Ground Floor, Room: Amphitheatre B

➡️ buff.ly/xSvXWbU
🧡 And don't forget you can meet this wonderful bunch at the Meet The Editors session

📆 Thursday 28 August
⏰ 15:45 - 16:45
🫶 Come and say hello!

👉 buff.ly/wUlT2Ys