Partisan Self-Deception

Ezra Klein reminds me that this finding from Larry Bartels’ paper on the rationalizing voter is relevant to my talk of the ideological valence of economic optimism:

This plots voters’ view of the economy in 1996. That there’s some divergence shouldn’t be surprising. But the level of divergence increases as you start talking about better-informed voters. The more access to information you have, it seems, the more you can do to find information that will confirm your views.