Constraint is modest in the mass public — and far higher among the informed

Belief-system constraint (mean absolute correlation among the oriented issue scales) by year, split into three sophistication terciles. Higher means issue positions travel together. Shaded bands mark the early (1972–1984) and recent (2012–2024) comparison windows.

High sophistication (college+) Middle (some college) Low (high school or less)

Takeaway: the high-knowledge line sits durably above the low-knowledge line across the whole half-century, and the gap between them never closes — ideology is structured for the few, loose for the many.

Mean absolute weighted Pearson correlation across up to 21 issue pairs, by year and sophistication tercile; pairwise-complete, suppressed where pairwise N < 200. Pre-1980 years carry only the economic scales, so early constraint rests on as few as three pairs; the high–low gap is computed on identical item sets within each year. Source: ANES Cumulative File, weighted; per-tercile effective n in the tens of thousands pooled.

The same issues, two different publics

Issue-by-issue absolute correlations among the seven oriented scales, pooled 2012–2024. Darker squares mean the two positions move together more tightly. Left: the high-sophistication public. Right: the low-sophistication public.

Takeaway: the informed public's matrix is dense and dark — its issues form a single web — while the inattentive public's is pale, its positions only loosely related to one another.

High sophistication · mean |r| = 0.488

Low sophistication · mean |r| = 0.299

Absolute weighted Pearson correlations; recent pooled window 2012–2024, pairwise-complete. Diagonal cells (self-correlations) are omitted from the mean. High-sophistication effective n = 5,701; low n = 3,626. Source: ANES Cumulative File, weighted.

Do conservatives hold conservative positions? Mostly, if they are paying attention

Share of each sophistication tercile whose issue positions are “ideologically consistent” with their own liberal–conservative self-placement, by year. Higher means symbolic label and operational positions line up.

High sophistication Middle Low sophistication

Takeaway: across every year the informed public's label matches its positions far more often than the inattentive public's — the gap is wide early and, even as both rise, never closes.

“Consistent” = issue-position index falling on the same side as the respondent's self-placed ideology. Pooled shares: high 0.863, middle 0.793, low 0.705; overall 0.795 (n = 26,597 share observations). Source: ANES Cumulative File, weighted.