Does Sophistication Affect Electoral Outcomes?

Abstract

It is widely assumed that a representative democracy requires an enlightened citizenry in order to function properly. The competence of citizens has been studied extensively and the sociodemographic determinants of political sophistication are particularly well known. Much less is known about whether and how citizen competence affects electoral behaviour and outcomes. This article reviews the existing literature on these topics. Despite the widespread consensus that, generally speaking, citizen competence matters for electoral outcomes, the review produced a mixed result: some studies suggest that the political left would benefit from a better-informed electorate, while other studies suggest the opposite. Although the majoritarian electoral context is overrepresented in the evidence, the review shows that at the individual level, political knowledge greatly increases a person’s ability to match personal preferences with the right candidate or party in an election. The article also identifies several gaps in existing knowledge, thereby suggesting future research questions.

Continuous Consistent Voting: Individual- and Institutional-Level Predictors of Preference-Aligned Voting in 48 Democracies

“…At the individual-level, positive effects of political sophistication are consistent with the majority of the literature which finds that better-informed citizens are better able to vote in accordance with their preferences (Rapeli, 2018). Although the political sophistication variable was calculated differently for wave 5 compared to waves 1-4, owing to no political knowledge questions having been asked, an additional regression analysis of just the waves 1-4 data also found that political sophistication was positively predictive of continuous consistent voting, both with and without including disproportionality as a predictor (both B = .007, SE = .002, p<.001).…”

“…Some studies directly measure citizens' political knowledge by asking them questions about contemporary national politics (Lau et al, 2013), others combine knowledge scores of this kind with education level in an additive scale of 'political sophistication' , whereas others infer sophistication from an individual's education level (Singh, 2010). Sophistication and knowledge, though distinct constructs, are essentially used interchangeably and invariably produce concordant findings (Rapeli, 2018).…”

How does information affect vote choice in open-list PR systems?

“…Answering the counterfactual question whether voting behaviour would change if citizens were better informed is notoriously difficult (Rapeli 2018). We experimentally vary the available information about candidate policy positions.…”

The Association between ideology and resistance to governmental apology depends on political knowledge

“…Because political sophistication is defined by a combination of these multiple factors, there is no single measure that satisfies them all, and a variety of measures have been used. The most widely used are quiz-style political knowledge items that correspond to the number and range of cognitive elements in people's belief systems (e.g., Baum and Jamison, 2006;Weisberg and Nawara, 2010;Lau et al, 2014;Bergbower et al, 2015;Rapeli, 2018). As summarized by Delli Carpini and Keeter (1996), political knowledge is an understanding of (a) the systems under which politics operates, (b) the politicians and political parties that currently play a role in politics, and (c) specific policy-related events.…”