Cambridge University Press published an article by Gov professor Stephen Ansolabehere and Yale Assistant Professor of Political Science, and Gov Ph.D. holder, Shiro Kuriwaki, which analyzes public opinion on multitudinous issues and how Congress succeeds or fails in representing the majority.
The aspiration of representative democracy is that the legislature will make decisions that reflect what the majority of people want. The US Constitution, however, created a Congress with both majoritarian and counter-majoritarian forces. We study public opinion on 103 important issues on the congressional agenda from 2006 to 2022 using the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Congress made decisions that aligned with what the majority of people wanted on 55% of these issues. Analysis of each issue further reveals the circumstances under which Congress represents the majority and the many ways that representation fails. The likelihood that the House passes a bill is usually a reflection of public support for that policy, but Senate passage depends on how divided the public is on the issue and whether party control of the two chambers of Congress is divided. Legislative institutions make it difficult to pass popular bills but even more difficult to pass unpopular ones. As a result, most representational failures occur because Congress failed to pass a popular bill, rather than because it passed a bill that the public did not want.
Read the article here.