Replication Data for: Elite Misperceptions in Foreign Policy

Many models of domestic politics in international relations presume that political elites correctly perceive public preferences, even as a growing body of research in political behavior calls this assumption into question. Leveraging seven paired surveys of 4852 foreign policy elites and 13687 members of the American public from 2004-2024 on 24 different questions, we show elites systematically misperceive public opinion in foreign policy, misperceiving the public as more isolationist and inward-looking than it actually is. We replicate this finding with a paired experiment showing elites effectively underestimate the public's responsiveness to cues from international organizations, and that elites with isolationist stereotypes underestimate public approval the most. These dynamics -- which operate predominantly through stereotyping, rather than projection -- have important implications for the study of political elites, public opinion about foreign policy, and efforts to test theoretical models of domestic politics in IR using public opinion data alone.