Abstract
In a series of experiments with 375 participants, we investigate the impact of biased polls on election outcomes, when voters have the opportunity to observe and learn about the bias by playing multiple voting rounds. While in control conditions, polls are unbiased, in treatment conditions, participants view only poll results where a particular candidate's vote share is the largest. We find that this candidate is consistently elected more often in the treatments than in the controls, because biased polls robustly distort voters' expectations about vote shares. Remarkably, this effect holds even when voters are \textit{explicitly} informed about the bias. Our results suggest that the anchoring effects of biased polls on participants' beliefs are stronger than potential reactance to biased information.
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