Michele Margolis

The Political Consequences of Uninformed Voters

Americans fail to meet the democratic ideal of an informed electorate, and the consequences of this political ignorance are a topic of significant scholarly debate. In two independent settings, we experimentally test the effect of political information on citizens’ attitudes toward the major parties in the U.S. When uninformed citizens receive political information, they systematically shift their political preferences away from the Republican Party and toward the Democrats. A lack of knowledge on the policy positions of the parties significantly hinders the ability of lowsocioeconomic-status citizens to translate their preferences into partisan opinions and vote choices. As a result, American public opinion—and potentially elections and public policy as a result—is significantly different from the counterfactual world in which all voters are informed. 1 Both authors contributed equally. We thank Steve Ansolabehere, Adam Berinsky, Ryan Enos, Gabe Lenz, Krista Loose, Mike Sances, Jas Sekhon, Jim Snyder, and seminar participants at Harvard, MIT, and the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association for comments, suggestions, and support. We also thank the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard and the MIT Political Experiments Lab for financial and logistical support. Anthony Fowler (anthony.fowler@uchicago.edu) is an Assistant Professor in the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago and Michele Margolis (margolis@mit.edu) is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.