Research Note: Partisan Priming and Subjective Evaluations of the Economy: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Issues and controversies connected to problems of endogeneity plague many topics of interest in political science, perhaps none more so than in the field of economic voting where in recent years a lively debate has developed over the potential endogeneity of subjective economic evaluations to partisan preferences. Although a great deal of attention has focused on dealing with these problems at the analysis stage rather less attention has been paid to dealing with the problem at source - that is at the measurement stage. In this study we use a question order experiment to assess whether partisan priming influences subjective evaluations of the economy. If it does then endogeneity bias might be reduced by making questions easier for people to comprehend and answer and by taking steps to minimize the need for information shortcuts.