Uninformed Votes Reappraising Information Effects

Authors: Douglas R Pierce

Publish Date: 2014/06/28

Volume: 37, Issue: 3, Pages: 537-565

PDF Link

Abstract

Previous work on information effects and preferences has used the technique of statistical imputation to estimate the impact of political ignorance on presidential preferences suggesting that the electorate would vote differently if more informed In this paper I challenge that assertion by disputing the extent to which the changes in preferences generated by imputation are interpretable as information effects Using data from the 1992–2008 National Election Surveys I show that the changes in preferences resulting from imputation fail to support a number of hypothesized relationships between political knowledge and preferences I suggest that the resulting shifts in preferences are most likely attributable to the psychological traits of the more informed rather than to information itselfMy thanks to Richard Lau David Redlawsk Cesar Zucco Michael Delli Carpini and several anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript Data used for this research is publicly available from The American National Election Studies ANES wwwelectionstudiesorg All analyses were carried out using the R statistical program R Core Team 2013 R A language and environment for statistical computing R Foundation for Statistical Computing Vienna Austria URL http//wwwRprojectorg/ Errors and mistakes are solely the responsibility of the author

Keywords: