Are Perceptions of Local Conditions Rooted in Reality? Evidence From Two Large-Scale Local Surveys

In this research note, we test an assumption that is often made in the literature on local retrospective voting—that peoples’ perceptions of local conditions are well-grounded in reality. To do so, we examine the relationship between objective measures of local conditions and aggregated survey measures of perceptions of those conditions. We focus on three different conditions that have been shown to influence vote choice and approval at the local level—the state of the local economy, the quality of local public schools, and levels of local crime—and find strong evidence that perceptions of these conditions reflect actual local conditions. This important and previously unreported finding helps bolster the connections some scholars have found between objective indicators and election outcomes at the local level, as those indicators are tied to mass perceptions of related local conditions, which are connected to evaluations of incumbents. Overall, our results indicate that local electorates are well-positioned to hold local officials responsible. Given the general conception of the local electorate as disengaged, the strength and consistency of our findings are somewhat unexpected.