Yes, But Did They Learn Anything? An Experimental Investigation of Voter Decision Making on Foreign Policy Issues

Abstract

Do non-graded, one-time, short presentations by a panel of professors on foreign policy issues affect voting behavior among students? Did the panel itself contribute to students' understanding of the importance of foreign policy in evaluating candidates? Did presentations lead to changes in students' candidate preferences? And, fi nally, did the event lead to sustained changes in students' preferences? We fi nd that even though issues of foreign policy tend not to be front and center in American elections, when young voters are presented with information about candidate's foreign policy positions, as we did in this study, it does seem to have an impact on which candidate they plan on voting for.