Low Levels Of Political Knowledge Research Articles

What do voters know, and why does it matter? Investigating issue‐specific knowledge and candidate choice in the 2020 U.S. primaries

AbstractAre differences in issue‐specific knowledge associated with different candidate preferences, as would be expected if voters are judging candidates and their policy commitments on the basis of essential contextual knowledge they receive from the media? By utilizing a bias‐sensitive method of measuring politically relevant knowledge—on economic, foreign policy, and environmental issues—we were able to identify candidate‐selection effects of policy‐specific information. The study also offers new evidence on how psychological traits affect political thinking within a partisan group, whereas most research has focused on psychological asymmetries across ideological and partisan groups. Based on previous research, we expected Sanders supporters and supporters of other “anti‐establishment” candidates to have less accurate knowledge on these issues than Biden (and other establishment candidate) supporters, as the demographic groups that differentially supported Sanders tend to have lower levels of political knowledge. Instead, Sanders and anti‐establishment candidate supporters were found to be more knowledgeable on these issues. We also found psychological asymmetries among Democrats and Democrat‐leaning Independents, which were associated with candidate preference. Overall, issue‐specific political knowledge was found to be an important predictor of vote choice.

The partisan heuristic and the voters’ knowledge: The essential role of the information environment

The low-information rationality theory expects voters with low political knowledge to make more use of the partisan heuristic than those with high knowledge. However, empirical studies on decision making in direct democracy observe a positive correlation between political knowledge and the use of party cues. We resolve this tension between theory and empirical evidence by demonstrating that the relationship between political knowledge and the use of party cues is conditional on the information environment. We provide evidence for this hypothesis by exploiting a natural experiment in Switzerland and analyze a large variety of direct democratic votes. The results show that voters with lower levels of political knowledge tend to align less with their preferred party because they often have a wrong perception of their preferred party’s vote recommendation. However, if information on parties’ position is easily available, their vote choice is at least as much in line with their preferred party as among those with high knowledge. This suggests that in such an information environment voters with low political knowledge strongly rely on the partisan heuristic. Our research note supports the low-information rationality theory and this way contributes to the literature on the quality of political opinion formation and the political psychology of reasoning and decision making.

The Political Landscape of the U.S. Twitterverse

ABSTRACT Prior research suggests that Twitter users in the United States are more politically engaged and more partisan than the American citizenry, who are generally characterized by low levels of political knowledge and disinterest in political affairs. This study seeks to understand this disconnect by conducting an observational analysis of the most popular accounts on American Twitter. We identify opinion leaders by drawing random samples of ordinary American Twitter users and observing whom they follow. We estimate the ideological leaning and political relevance of these opinion leaders and crowdsource estimates of perceived ideology. We find little evidence that American Twitter is as politicized as it is made out to be, with politics and hard news outlets constituting a small subset of these opinion leaders. Ordinary Americans are significantly more likely to follow nonpolitical opinion leaders on Twitter than political opinion leaders. We find no evidence of polarization among these opinion leaders either. While a few political professional categories are more polarized than others, the overall polarization dissipates when we factor in the rate at which the opinion leaders tweet: a large number of vocal nonpartisan opinion leaders drowns out the partisan voices on the platform. Our results suggest that the degree to which Twitter is political has likely been overstated in the past. Our findings have implications about how we use Twitter and social media, in general, to represent public opinion in the United States.

POLITICAL ABSENTEEISM IN "LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES" AS AN ACADEMIC AND NORMATIVE PROBLEM

The relevance of the study is determined by the significant and steady decline in the level of citizen participation in political and public life in recent decades in so-called liberal democracies, which cannot guarantee a fair value of political freedoms for all their members. In this light, the purpose of our study is to identify and reveal the problem areas of the study of "political absenteeism" in so-called liberal democracies. The study is based on a systemic and interdisciplinary approach, as well as on a critical approach, the use of which allowed to determine the relevance and originality of our research. Special scientific methods were also used: content analysis and the method of reconstruction. They allowed us to critically rethink the existing approaches to the study of "political absenteeism" and "electoral absenteeism". It turns out that so-called liberal democracies do not currently guarantee a fair price for political freedoms for their poorest (and usually less enlightened and younger) members. "Liberal democracies" may no longer be able (or, indeed, willing) to provide the necessary conditions for citizens to articulate their demands in a way that others can understand and accept and feel as citizens united in one coherent political team. There is not only a concentration of power and influence among the newest associations, but also a strengthening of the ruling "political" class, whose members tend to have a higher socio-economic status, participate more actively in various formal and informal political activities, and have higher levels of political knowledge and influence, along with an "apolitical" class whose members have lower socio-economic status, participate less actively in politics and have lower levels of political knowledge and influence.

Change We Can Believe In: Structural and Content Dynamics within Belief Networks

AbstractScholars have used network analysis to explore the structural properties of mass ideology. This article incorporates two important, though ignored features in past research by investigating how time shapes the properties of belief networks for different populations of people—those who exhibit high and low levels of political knowledge. We find that (1) belief network density increases asymmetrically among people with high relative to low knowledge; (2) symbolic preferences are more central to belief networks irrespective of survey timing or population; in contrast, policy beliefs exhibit some increase in centrality over time among the politically knowledgeable; and (3) a belief's centrality is unrelated to the amount of change it explains in other beliefs. Troublingly, this latter finding presents problems for describing belief networks using the vernacular of Conversian belief systems—a disconnect that seems grounded in the mismatch between Converse's individual‐level theory and network analysis' population‐based properties.

Navigating High-Choice European Political Information Environments: a Comparative Analysis of News User Profiles and Political Knowledge

The transition from low- to high-choice media environments has had far-reaching implications for citizens’ media use and its relationship with political knowledge. However, there is still a lack of comparative research on how citizens combine the usage of different media and how that is related to political knowledge. To fill this void, we use a unique cross-national survey about the online and offline media use habits of more than 28,000 individuals in 17 European countries. Our aim is to (i) profile different types of news consumers and (ii) understand how each user profile is linked to political knowledge acquisition. Our results show that five user profiles – news minimalists, social media news users, traditionalists, online news seekers, and hyper news consumers – can be identified, although the prevalence of these profiles varies across countries. Findings further show that both traditional and online-based news diets are correlated with higher political knowledge. However, online-based news use is more widespread in Southern Europe, where it is associated with lower levels of political knowledge than in Northern Europe. By focusing on news audiences, this study provides a comprehensive and fine-grained analysis of how contemporary European political information environments perform and contribute to an informed citizenry.

Uninformed or informed populists? The relationship between political knowledge, socio-economic status and populist attitudes in Poland

ABSTRACT This article uses data from the 2015 Polish parliamentary election to test the relationship between political knowledge, socio-economic status and populist attitudes. Recent scholarship has challenged the idea that populism is an unsophisticated form of politics that appeals primarily to the ill-informed and those of low social status. We find that while lower levels of political knowledge are associated with higher levels of populism, it is nevertheless ‘informed populists' who are more likely to vote for populist parties, while ‘uninformed populists' are more likely to abstain. These findings challenge the stereotype of populism as ‘politics for stupid people'.

Do Women Vote Less Correctly? The Effect of Gender on Ideological Proximity Voting and Correct Voting

Studies routinely find that women have lower levels of political knowledge than men. This gender gap is usually interpreted as troublesome for democracy, because a lack of political knowledge could...

Participatory practices and political knowledge: how motivational inequality moderates the effects of formal participation on knowledge

Democracies rely upon politically knowledgeable citizens for their legitimacy and to sustain themselves. In Australia, policy initiatives have addressed concerns about the low levels of political knowledge among young people. Yet research about how young Australians acquire political knowledge, beyond schools, is scarce. The present study referring to the concepts of situated learning, self-determination and knowledge gap, asks whether young adult’s participatory practices (e.g., participation in politics, prior involvement in decision-making at school) predict political knowledge. Analyses that control for multiple predictors of political knowledge suggest differential associations between political knowledge and different participatory practices. Motivational inequality, as defined by interest in politics, moderates the associations with party-political participation and participation at school; the conditional effect of party-related political participation is further moderated by educational resources. Gendered differences are identified for some participatory practices. Directions for future research and the importance of participatory experiences and how to establish a foundation of young citizens’ political knowledge are discussed.

The Effects of Religious Attendance and Evangelical Identification on Media Perception and Political Knowledge

AbstractScholars have shown that religious activity can prepare individuals for civic activity by endowing them with the skills and motivation to engage in politics. Others, however, assert that religious dogmatism may lead to disengagement with the secular world and politics more generally. These two perspectives have resulted in contradictory findings on a key aspect of civic ability: political knowledge. I argue that while religiosity may indeed increase individuals’ engagement in a wide array of political activities, including some aspects of political knowledge, religious commitment decreases the ability to acquire accurate information about certain types of political facts. This argument is tested with a number of national surveys, and I find that while religion has a mixed effect on knowledge of general political structures and actors, it increases the perception of media hostility, which leads to lower levels of political knowledge about policy-specific surveillance information.

Knowledge Persists, Opinions Drift: Learning and Opinion Change in a Three-Wave Panel Experiment

Considerable evidence exists that Americans possess not only low levels of political knowledge but also relatively uninformed—and sometimes misinformed—opinions on policy matters. Many recent studies focus on whether informational treatments have immediate effects on citizens’ factual beliefs and opinions about policy, but less is known about whether such treatments have enduring effects. Using a three-wave panel experiment, we assess the immediate and enduring effects of factual information provision on factual beliefs and opinion of the Affordable Care Act. We find a relatively persistent effect of information provision on accuracy of factual beliefs, but only an ephemeral shift in opinion, which typically drifts back to its pretreatment state within a few weeks. Our findings have implications for the understanding of citizen learning and opinion change, as well as ongoing scholarly debates about how long-lasting the effects of (experimental) interventions are.

Fast, frugal and correct? An experimental study on the influence of time scarcity and quantity of information on the voter decision making process

Classical theories of political representation claim that high levels of political knowledge and awareness across the electorate are crucial for a well-functioning democracy. In real life, though, the actual amount of political information possessed by voters is small and unevenly distributed. In addition, electoral decision making is complex and often characterized by severe time pressure. This study therefore experimentally tests the theoretical framework of “fast and frugal” voters and the “less-is-more effect” (Gigerenzer and Goldstein in Psychol Rev 103(4):650–669, 1996), which expects that in some instances low levels of political knowledge may actually result in equally good or even better outcomes than in the case of well-informed decisions. It is hence assumed that employing specific cognitive shortcuts can help voters make good and quick decisions, even with a lack of information. We have used a laboratory experiment to create an environment characterized by severe time pressure that allowed for only shallow information search and limited comparisons across alternatives. Subjects were able to base their decisions only on a small number of criteria operationalized by candidates’ positions on current political issues with various levels of perceived salience. Voters appear to simplify decision making by focusing mainly on those policy attitudes they consider important. Consequently, it seems that shifting the decision-making strategy from accuracy to efficiency has no effect on the final outcome.

The Comparative Effects of Electoral Laws on Voter Rationality: Plurality versus Proportional Election Rules

Electoral rules inherently structure the development of not only a political party system, but also create incentives and disincentives for individuals to participate in politics. Few scholars study the interaction between various electoral arrangements and how they encourage or discourage voting based on the characteristics of individuals. This research uses the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems to investigate the relationship between plurality and proportional electoral arrangements, on the one hand, and how they influence levels of political knowledge, sophistication, and the likelihood to vote, on the other hand. The countries studied are the United States which uses simple plurality rules, Australia which employs the alternative vote with compulsory voting, and Ireland which uses the single transferable vote. We find that plurality electoral arrangements result in consistently lower levels of political knowledge and voter sophistication. Furthermore, low levels of knowledge but not sophistication reduce turnout in plurality systems. These decreased turnout levels are greatest among individuals with the lowest levels of political knowledge, where individuals experience the highest burdens of voting. Strikingly, turnout among the highest educated citizens in the United States is still lower than participation by the least educated in Ireland.

Why do the less educated oppose trade openness? A test of three explanations in the Netherlands

The well-documented opposition to trade openness among the less educated is frequently interpreted in terms of the factor endowment model, suggesting that it is the insecure economic position of the less educated that underlies their disapproval. This theory is, however, contested. Consequently, we have developed two alternative explanations, dereification theory and political-knowledge theory, which are informed by the literature on economic globalisation and the broader literature in cultural and political sociology and political science. We test these three theories by analysing Dutch survey data (N = 1302). We reveal that higher levels of opposition to trade openness among the less educated can, in order of salience, be attributed to: (1) their lower levels of cultural capital (in line with dereification theory), (2) their lower incomes (in line with economic-insecurity theory), and (3) their lower levels of political knowledge. We discuss the broader implications of our findings, including the relevance of cultural capital and dereification theory for understanding various types of cultural conservatism among the less educated, and we provide suggestions for further research into opposition to trade openness among specific segments of higher social strata.

Heuristics, Heterogeneity and Green Choices Voting on California’s Proposition 23

Ballot initiatives and referendums are increasingly popular methods for addressing important political issues. Studies of voting in these events has found that people rely on party leader and candidate image heuristics when deciding how to cast their ballots. Some analysts have argued that these effects are heterogeneous, being larger for people with lower levels of political knowledge. However, research in experimental economics and political psychology suggests that the impact of heuristics may be greater among more knowledgeable individuals. This paper investigates these rival hypotheses using survey data on voting in a ballot initiative to repeal California’s climate change legislation. Analyses using methods appropriate for studying interaction effects in nonlinear multivariate models demonstrate that candidate heuristics are stronger among more knowledgeable people.

Reexamining the “Racial Gap” in Political Knowledge

Scholars have long lamented the low levels of political knowledge in the American public, particularly the “racial gap” in the rates of knowledge between racial/ethnic minorities and whites. This article examines whether the racial gap is an artifact of perceptual biases or differential item functioning, brought about by the distinct political experiences of racial/ethnic minorities in the United States. In analyzing data from the 2008 American National Election Studies, the raw responses to political knowledge questions indeed reveal a discrepancy in blacks’ and Latinos’ placements of prominent political figures when compared to whites. However, once these perceptual biases are corrected for, the racial gap dissipates. Blacks and Latinos are able to accurately identify the positions of prominent political candidates and parties on a range of policies across the liberal-conservative dimension. These findings pose several implications for our current understanding of the uneven distributions of political k...

Knowledge Matters: Policy Cross-pressures and Black Partisanship

Black Americans are a core Democratic constituency, despite holding views on social issues that put them in conflict with the party. Conventional wisdom attributes this partisan commitment to the salience of race and concerns about racial inequality. This paper considers whether the Democratic bias derives in part from low levels of political knowledge. Using data from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Study, this paper examines how political knowledge moderates the relationship between social issue cross-pressures and partisan attitudes among Black Americans. I demonstrate that the extent to which Democratic allegiance persists despite policy disagreements depends on whether blacks are sufficiently knowledgeable to act on their policy views, and not simply on the importance that blacks assign to their racial commitments. It is only among politically knowledgeable Black Americans that social issue cross-pressures are at all politically consequential; for them, Democratic partisanship is resilient but not immune to policy disagreements. For blacks with low levels of political knowledge, partisan support is unaffected by policy disagreements. This pattern is most pronounced among religiously active Black Evangelicals, for whom social issues are highly salient.

The Role of Media Use in the Classroom and at Home in Improving Political Knowledge

Concerns regarding levels of political knowledge among America’s younger citizens and their undependable commitment to the political process continue to spur researchers and educators to identify the most effective methods of civic instruction. The recent finding from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for civics that only 24% of twelfth-graders scored proficient suggests that young people are entering college with low levels of political knowledge. Consequently, research and civic interventions at the high school level play a pivotal role in preparing young people for adulthood and active citizenship.Through an experiment involving 361 students in four high schools in New Jersey as well as the parents of 152 of these students, we measured the effects of systematically incorporating news magazines into social studies curricula on students’ levels of political knowledge. After conducting a baseline survey measuring political knowledge among students, we randomly assigned the students' social studies classes to either: a treatment group assigned to read and discuss articles about politics in a newsweekly magazine in class for eight weeks; a treatment group in which students were assigned to read and discuss the same articles at home with their parents, with the students subsequently also discussing the articles in the classroom; and a control group that did not receive the magazine and did not engage in discussion. We followed up with surveys of the students at the end of the eight-week intervention, and then six weeks later to measure for longer term effects of the experiment.We found that the combination of reading and discussing news articles in the home and in the classroom positively affected levels of political knowledge for those students not taking honors or advanced courses. This was also the case when taking into account parents’ knowledge of politics. Students outside of the honors and advanced tracks, and whose parents had low levels of knowledge, were most likely to benefit from the intervention. This research not only underlines the importance of such factors as political discussion, news consumption and parental involvement, but it suggests a promising method for boosting levels of political knowledge for those students in greatest need of support. Moreover, it suggests a road map for preparing students to enter college civically literate and inclined to participate in the political process.

Leader heuristics, political knowledge and voting in Britain's AV referendum

This paper uses data gathered in the British Election Study's 2011 AV Referendum Survey to investigate the impact of party leader images on referendum voting. The emphasis on leader images accords well with research showing that leader heuristics have sizable effects on voting in major referendums and general elections in Britain and other mature democracies. Reacting to these findings, some analysts have argued that the effects of leader images are heterogeneous, being stronger for voters with lower levels of political knowledge. In contrast, consistent with recent research in experimental economics and political psychology, it can be hypothesized that more knowledgeable voters rely more heavily on leader heuristics than do less knowledgeable individuals. Using multivariate statistical techniques developed for interpreting interaction effects in nonlinear models, analyses indicate that a political knowledge index focusing on the electoral system does not have statistically significant effects on referendum voting. However, voters' knowledge of leaders' positions on AV does interact with leader images. The analyses show that voters with higher levels of political knowledge are influenced more strongly by leader heuristics than are those who are less knowledgeable.

Reconsidering the Relationship Between Cultural Theory, Political Ideology, and Political Knowledge

ObjectiveSocial scientists from a variety of disciplines have employed concepts drawn from cultural theory (CT) to explain preferences across an array of issues. Recent research has challenged key elements of CT in a number of ways, perhaps most importantly by arguing that cultural types are simply another formulation of political ideology, and that only politically knowledgeable respondents reliably utilize either cultural or ideological categories in formulating preferences. This study reconsiders and expands upon this contention.MethodsPrincipal component analyses of responses to a U.S. national survey of 4,387 people.ResultsOur findings are threefold: (1) people with low levels of political knowledge are able to sort egalitarianism and individualism into coherent worldviews; (2) people with high levels of knowledge do not collapse egalitarianism and individualism onto a single scale of political ideology; and (3) regardless of levels of knowledge, survey respondents are able to recognize all four of the value orientations proposed by CT.ConclusionCT, which is related to but different than political ideology, offers a robust system of worldviews that both high‐ and low‐knowledge individuals might draw upon to formulate opinions and make decisions.