And they're gonna wanna know what is it, what, what, what could possibly be the reason that Republican states are, are more l-- are close, you know, close to public opinion in their states and Democratic states are not? What's going on there?

So my, uh, so none of the, the mechanisms testing that I have in the paper, this isn't, um, causal, so I wanna be very careful with the claims I'm making.

Um, but what I, what I'm arguing is that, um, I compare state policy then to the preferences of elites, which I'm defining in two different ways.

First, I'm looking at it as the wealthiest people in those states.

Um, and then I'm also defining elites as, uh, policy practitioners in Washington, D.C., coming from, um, data from David Broockman, um, and co-authors.

And what I find is that in blue states, policy is much closer to the preferences of the wealthiest Democrats in those states, and it's also much closer to, uh, policy practitioners in D.C.

So I think it's a similar story to what, um, others have argued at the national level, like Gilens and Page, um, that policy more so reflects the preferences of, um, elites.

Okay