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Recent research on the determinants of policy outcomes in American states and on related matters has employed simulated state-level public opinion data. This article critically examines the simulation methodology: its assumptions are evaluated, its computation procedures shown to be unnecessarily complicated and inaccurate, and its estimates demonstrated to be logically confounded with the socio-demographic factors that define them. Thus, they cannot be used, as intended, to investigate the role of public opinion in the policy-making process.
David Seidman (Wed,) studied this question.