Single-firm targeted policy wins likely exceed what high-salience surveys capture

Evidence

If we had data on the activity of the thousands of groups not included in our net interest-group alignment measure, we might find many cases in which a group (perhaps unopposed by any other groups) got its way. This might be particularly true of narrow issues like special tax breaks or subsidies aimed at just one or two business firms, which are underrepresented in our set of relatively highsalience policies. (Our data set includes only policies thought to be important enough for a national opinion survey to ask a question about it.) — Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, Testing Theories of American Politics, 114

Categorization

• SEED: Connects to the intra-elite-thread angle: ‘narrow issues’ aimed at one or two firms are where the loop’s operators are most identifiable and least surveilled by public-data instruments.