Partisan Retrospection?: Partisan Gaps in Retrospection are Highly Variable

The difference between partisans’ responses on retrospection items is highly variable, ranging from over 40% to nearly 0. For instance, in 1988 nearly 30% fewer Democrats than Republicans reported that the inflation rate between 1980 and 1988 had declined. (It had.) However, similar proportions of Republicans and Democrats got questions about changes in the size of the budget deficit and defense spending between 1980 and 1988 right. The median partisan gap across 20 items asked in the NES over 5 years (1988, 1992, 2000, 2004, and 2008) was about 15 points (the median was about 12 points), and the standard deviation was about 13 points. (See the tables.) This much variation suggests that observed bias in partisans’ perceptions depends on a variety of conditioning variables. For one, there is some evidence to suggest that during severe recessions, partisans do not differ much in their assessment of economic conditions (See here.) Even when there are partisan gaps, however, they may not be real (see paper (pdf)).