Blind Guessing? Voter Competence About Partisan Messaging

• In Event: Learning and Beliefs

Abstract

In this study, I develop a series of novel inference experiments to assess whether voters are 'blind guessers' when tasked with identifying partisan messaging -- that is, unable or unwilling to discern much distinction between the messages typically aired by Democrats and Republicans in congressional elections. The experiments ask respondents to correctly infer candidates' party from their campaign statements, which allows an analysis of the individual and ad-level factors that influence inaccurate party inferences. From the data, I find voters possess a modest level of competence in correctly inferring party in campaign messages. Significantly, this competence is shared even by the least knowledgeable and informed participants. Not surprisingly though, competence varies with knowledge about partisan facts and interest in politics. However, this holds only for negative ads, and not positive ones. In exploring this tone effect, I find a major role of elite strategy -- candidates appear to use strategic policy communication in their messages, which diminishes voters’ ability to attribute the correct party in positive ads. Overall, this finding underscores that elite strategic communication, that is 'crafted talk', can be an important source of voter error even for the most politically informed, raising broader implications for theories of voter competence and blind retrospection in elections.

Author

• John A. Henderson, Yale University