Amanda J. Heideman

Objective This article investigates the extent to which perceptions of the competitive context of mayoral elections reflect actual levels of competition and how that relationship is shaped by political expertise. Methods We use a unique survey data set of more than 6000 respondents interviewed in 40 separate mayoral elections. Results In broad strokes, people living in competitive cities are more likely than others to predict competitive outcomes. However, in keeping with the knowledge gap hypothesis, the relationship between objective levels of competition and perceived levels of competition is much stronger among those with relatively high levels of political knowledge than those with low levels of political knowledge. Conclusions The connection between actual and perceived conditions does not hold evenly for all segments of society—the information‐rich respond to their political environment, while the information‐poor are relatively unmoved by that environment. This pattern of asymmetric information acquisition is a familiar one in American politics and provides further evidence of an important source of political inequality.

In this article, we investigate the relative roles of local tax policies and respondent attitudes and characteristics in shaping support for local taxes. Using a unique set of survey data collected across dozens of cities over several years, combined with contextual data on local tax systems, we can offer a comprehensive picture of who supports, and who opposes local taxes. The contributions of our approach are three-fold: We use measures of satisfaction with local taxes, using data gathered across dozens of localities; we incorporate measures of the local tax systems to help account for city-to-city variation in local tax attitudes; and we incorporate measures of racial attitudes to account for an important non-material element heretofore not incorporated in studies of local tax attitudes. Integrating these factors into an explanation of local tax policies rounds out and offers a more realistic understanding of attitudes in this critical policy area.