The Development of an Issue Public: Evidence from The Eras Tour

Scholars describe the American electorate as generally uninformed about politics, but segmented into "issue publics'' with structured preferences on specific issues. These groups may ameliorate the democratic dilemma, but theory and evidence on how individuals join them lag behind that ambitious claim. We propose a two-stage theory of issue public development. It begins with potential issue publics—groups with highly-valued interests or identities that hold latent connections to political issues. A pivotal circumstance then activates an issue’s political relevance for individual members. We test this theory with an instructive case: Taylor Swift fans' attempts to purchase high-demand concert tickets in November 2022. Website errors created as-if random ticket allocation, personalizing the politics of economic fairness for unlucky fans. Survey evidence supports our preregistered expectations: fans' ticket-buying fates caused noteworthy attitudinal and behavioral differences toward event ticketing politics. We conclude that highlighting the unrealized political relevance of interests could facilitate democratic accountability.