On average, it takes about 90% of Americans to agree on some policy for it to have 50% chance to get enacted.
Economic elites get their way a bit more often. Graphically, it is underwhelming.
But this comparison is misleading. Why? People in the 10th 50th 90th centile usually agree, so their opinions are highly correlated. To detect their individual effects, one must regress them together. It looks like this. Holding elite opinion constant, opinions of 10th and 50th centile simply don't matter.
It looks about the same if we look at more granular divisions. The higher your income, the more your opinion matters to the government. Essentially, it's democracy in spirit, but when income classes disagree, elites almost always win with regards to policy.
These kinds of results suggest that for conservatives to win, they must win over elites. Trump is an elite, Thiel is an elite, Musk the elitest, Bezos Zuckerberg to follow?
Politicians implement policies more in line with the public's preference during election years when they need the support. Makes sense.
However, they then repeal these policies later on.
It appears the Republicans are more democratic in that their policies are more aligned with the public.
Democratic party identification appears to be mainly about pandering to some social group, Republican party identification is more about politics.
This finding is not surprising given current 'identity politics' events.
Did better survey data make politicians more likely to implement popular policies? It seems the answer is yes, but looking in details, it seems the result is just that G W Bush was unusually democratic. Even the 50th centile income has influence on policies on his watch.
Another way to look at this is to think of parties or administrations as maximizing their own goals. When they only have a narrow power edge in congress, they need more support. When they have a solid majority, they don't have to care. In fact, it appears that way too.
It's curious how in modern history, the civil rights movement and legislation is viewed as a great win. However, it was actually implemented against the public and even the affluent's will. Johnson admin. could do this because they had a solid majority, and didn't care about the public.
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