Determinants of the opinion gap between the elites and the public in the United States

Recent scholarship indicates that elites possess disproportionate power in the policy-making process in the United States. The degree to which elite preferences trump the preferences of non-elite Americans raises questions about American democracy, and even indicates the nation exhibits oligarchic tendencies. This paper seeks to further our understanding of when or how elite preferences differ from those of the general public. We utilize the unique survey data that ask identical questions both to the elites and to the general public, and present a quantitative model in which the opinion gap between elites and non-elites is the dependent variable. Our results indicate that elites are particularly likely to diverge from the rest of the population on issues related to economic and domestic policy. The preference gap is typically smaller on issues related to international affairs.