Americans don’t need to agree with elected officials in their districts, they just need someone in government to represent them

Modern electoral politics typically produces two narratives: competition between candidates in individual districts and competition for overall control of government. Which of these matters more for voters? Is it most important to have their preferred candidate win in their own districts, or would voters accept an electoral loss locally if their political preferences were represented in the legislature as a whole? In new research, Jeff Harden and Chris Clark find strong evidence supporting the latter perspective. It is much more important to Americans that their political preferences are represented by a group of legislators, even if that group does not include their own representative