Political Distrust and Conservative Voting in Ballot Measure Elections

Over the past thirty years, the cumulative effects of direct democracy have served to decrease both levels of taxation and spending in the American states. Yet conservative budgetary policy measures passed during this time period were likely to occur in liberal states. Using data on over thirty separate ballot issues, the author offers a solution to this puzzle, demonstrating that distrusting government serves as a consistently robust predictor of conservative policy choice. The implication of this finding is that citizens often choose conservative policy outcomes because they believe that government is functionally incapable of giving them what they want.