Does constituency focus improve attitudes to MPs? A test for the UK

A substantial literature demonstrates that in advanced democracies the public generally prefer for MPs to be focused on their constituencies. However, the existing literature fails to prove that the general public is aware when MPs are doing so, and whether their views of the MP change correspondingly. I test this using a high-quality proxy for constituency focus – talking about the constituency in the House of Commons (Kellermann, 2016) – linking this to British Election Study survey data on perceived constituency focus and trust. I show that ‘real’ constituency focus strongly predicts perceived constituency focus and also predicts trust. As expected, these effects exist only for constituents who know (recall) the name of their MP. While previous studies argue that the public want ‘workhorses’ who give them ‘value for money’ by speaking in Parliament, I instead suggest that the focus, not the volume, of activity can be a more productive route for MPs to develop trust.