Peter K. Enns
Sociological Science May 4, 2026
10.15195/v13.a21
Abstract
The finding that government policy is, “virtually unrelated to the desires of the low- and middle-income citizens” (Gilens 2005:789), is one of the most influential social science results of the last two decades. This article offers a new perspective on this finding. I show that the seemingly innocuous decision to restrict analyses to data where different income groups’ policy support differs (i.e., a preference gap exists) introduced Simpson’s paradox, leading to misleading conclusions about whose preferences policy reflects. The same concerns apply to analyses of responsiveness to men and women and to partisan groups. I also present evidence that other common approaches for evaluating policy responsiveness can produce equally misleading conclusions. These findings suggest a need to reconsider conventional wisdom about political influence. The conclusion offers methodological recommendations and discusses implications related to understanding social and economic inequality and support for populist candidates.
The finding that government policy is, “virtually unrelated to the desires of the low- and middle-income citizens” (Gilens 2005:789), is one of the most influential social science results of the last two decades. This article offers a new perspective on this finding. I show that the seemingly innocuous decision to restrict analyses to data where different income groups’ policy support differs (i.e., a preference gap exists) introduced Simpson’s paradox, leading to misleading conclusions about whose preferences policy reflects. The same concerns apply to analyses of responsiveness to men and women and to partisan groups. I also present evidence that other common approaches for evaluating policy responsiveness can produce equally misleading conclusions. These findings suggest a need to reconsider conventional wisdom about political influence. The conclusion offers methodological recommendations and discusses implications related to understanding social and economic inequality and support for populist candidates.
 | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. |
Supplemental Materials
Reproducibility Package: Data and code to reproduce all numerical results are available here: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/9QADPC.
- Citation: Enns, K. Peter. 2026. “How a Seemingly Innocuous and Intuitive Methodological Choice Confused a Generation of Research on Policy Responsiveness” Sociological Science 13: 528-564.
- Received: December 15, 2025
- Accepted: February 25, 2026
- Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Bart Bonikowski
- DOI: 10.15195/v13.a21
My book “Democracy Without Polticians” is being published by Routledge this month, and as a political theorist rather than quantiative (looking at statistics) person, I would loive to get your take on some of what I say about the studies of Gilens and Page.
“Since Gilens published his research, some other academics have called his methods, analysis and conclusions into question. In my view, the entire issue of politician “responsiveness” may be spurious. I put the word “responsiveness” in quotes because this research didn’t establish whether the correlation between Congressional action and the policy preferences of the wealthy is the result of Congress responding to the wealthy (perhaps due to campaign contributions), or merely reflects the fact that nearly all members of Congress are themselves in the top 10 percent, and naturally share the preferences of their economic class. It may be that politicians reward campaign donors, but that since most actions of politicians are completely invisible to their nominal constituents, as a ruling elite, they are generally free to do whatever they wish.”
AND LATER
“But it is possible that this nominally “high income” [refewrring to the 90th percewntile] group is not that dissimilar from the bulk of the population, while the top 0.1% of income earners (for example) could have distinctly different policy preferences, but be essentially invisible in the data because of their rarity. If politicians were being uniquely responsive to the super-rich, it wouldn’t be detectable in any study based on survey data.
The other limitation of all such studies is the relevance of off-the-cuff public opinion in terms of judging meaningful responsiveness and representation. Also, as noted above, there are a relatively limited number of “issues” that polling firms have chosen to include in their voter surveys. This generally, though not exclusively, reflects the agenda of “news-worthy” topics that political leaders have promoted. Competitive elections inevitably generate a simplified pseudo-politics for mass consumption. Keen observers are aware that much of what passes for “politics” is performance for the media. Murray Edelman formulated the concept of symbolic politics in the 1980’s, which underpins most political communication. There are two political “realities;” there is the actual effect political actions have in the real world, and the theatrical packaging or symbolic impact in the electoral arena. According to Edelman, political players are compelled to produce a simplified make-believe political world using symbols and rituals to sway voters through the mass media.”
I’m sharing a short post that I wrote for 3Streams that summarizes the article’s main argument and includes videos that illustrate why analyzing preference gaps introduces Simpson’s paradox and incorrect conclusions about policy responsiveness: https://medium.com/p/b60d0440e756.