Gaps between elite and public opinion

In a recent post, I mentioned a tendency (especially among conservatives) to assume that elites are to the left of the public.  In the survey I discussed there, on foreign policy priorities, there was an elite-public gap on six of them.  Those six, with the percent of each group saying that it should be a "very important" goal:

                                   Public           R Elite          D Elite
Stopping drugs             83%             65%                45%
Illegal immigration      57%             37%                12%

Defending allies           45%            57%                59%
Protecting jobs             81%            41%                39%
Trade deficit                 51%            32%                27%

Strengthening UN         44%            11%               39%

The first two can be seen in left-right terms (note the difference between Democratic and Republican elites), and elites of both parties are to the "left" of the public.  The last one also can, but on that one elites of both parties are to the "right" of the public.  That may seem surprising, since a lot of conservatives seem to think that denouncing the UN is a popular position.  I think it says something interesting about popular views of international affairs, and I may write more about that later.

But then there are the middle three.  These are not normally thought of as left-right issues, and there is little difference between Democratic and Republican elites and a substantial gap between elites and the public.  On these, the differences may follow from greater sophistication (that is, knowing more and thinking more about the issues), or the influence of "experts."  For example, people who think more about foreign relations are more likely to realize that we can't count on allies to help us when we need it unless we're ready to help them when they need it.  The lower ratings of protecting jobs and the trade deficit follow from economic theory, which elites are more likely to be familiar with, at least at second hand.  The ones on which there is a partisan difference but in which elites of both parties are on one side relative to the public may have similar explanations.  For example, the lower priority for stopping drugs is probably not because elites don't care about drug use, but because they think of it as mostly a domestic problem rather than a foreign policy issue (no one would try to smuggle them in unless there was demand for them). 

Of course, this doesn't mean that elite views are always right.  My point is that the general "elites are out of touch" laments (and analyses of how that is supposed to have happened) are misleading. 

These data are from 1998, and a lot has happened since then.  There are comparable data from as late as 2014, which I'll look at in a later post.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]