Implicit Political Knowledge

Abstract

Political knowledge today is studied primarily at the explicit level. Measures of political knowledge often rely on testing whether voters are aware of various “facts” about political life, such as the names and offices of prominent political actors, the institutional structures of the political system, and the ideological or policy differences between the major political parties (e.g., Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). These various kinds of political information are considered to be important by political scientists and other social scientists because they facilitate the informed voting decisions that are needed to hold elected leaders accountable (e.g., Lau and Redlawsk 2006; Pande 2011).