#402 Rocky Talk – Do Voters Actually Care About Federal Budget Deficits?

This episode's guest is John V. Kane, Assistant Professor at New York University. We hear a lot of talk about budget deficits, but do voters really care about government spending as much as they say? Like many other kinds of political attitudes, concern about government deficits and debt may be, in part, a result of systematic partisan bias. Drawing upon his recently published article, “Deficit Attention Disorder” (co-authored with Ian G. Anson), Kane shows how both partisans and partisan media shift their concern about deficits in response to changes in party control of the presidency. These results corroborate Kane and Anson’s theory of “partisan-motivated issue attention” (PMIA), in which partisans can satisfy partisan instincts by caring more, or less, about particular issues when it benefits their preferred party. Interview by Dartmouth student Kavya Nivarthy '25. Edited by Laura Hemlock. Music: Debussy Arabesque no 1. Composer: Claude Debussy