POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY | Volume 137 Number 1 2022 | www.psqonline.org © 2022 Academy of Political Science DOI: 10.1002/polq.13313 125 The Conservative Bias in America’s Local Governments BRIAN F. SCHAFFNER JESSE H. RHODES RAYMOND J. LA RAJA CANONICAL THEORIES OF REPRESENTATION in American politics argue that politicians seek to represent the median voter, and empirical findings generally demonstrate the responsiveness of elected officials to public opinion. 1 However, recent research on inequality in representation provides convincing indications of a pervasive conservative bias among elected officials, particularly on economic issues. Strong evidence now suggests that more affluent individuals and whites—two groups that tend to have more conservative preferences on matters relating to taxation, redistribution, and regulation of businesses—receive more representation than do less affluent BRIAN F. SCHAFFNER is the Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies in the Department of Political Science and Tisch College at Tufts University. JESSE H. RHODES is professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Associate Director of the UMass Poll. RAYMOND J. LA RAJA is Associate Dean at the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts‐Amherst, and Associate Director of the UMass Poll. 1 Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957); Robert S. Erikson, Michael B. MacKuen, and James A. Stimson, The Macro Polity (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2002); Chris Tausanovitch and Christopher Warshaw, “Representation in Municipal Government,” American Political Science Review 108 (August 2014): 605–641; and Devin Caughey and Christopher Warshaw, “Policy Preferences and Policy Change: Dynamic Responsiveness in the American States, 1936–2014,” American Political Science Review 112 (May 2018): 249–266. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/psq/article/137/1/125/6848787 by guest on 13 January 2023