&quot;both liberals and conservatives tend to overestimate how conservative their constituents are, conservatives’ perceptions in this regard are exceptionally strong – conservative politicians typically overestimate the conservatism of their constituencies by more than 20 percentage points on these issues. This difference is so large that ​<i>nearly half of conservative politicians appear to believe that they represent a district that is as or more conservative on these issues than are the most conservative districts in the entire country</i>​.&quot;<p>I heard a quote years ago that &quot;reality has a liberal bias.&quot; Based on the data...that appears true.