The Varying Role of Voter Information Across Democratic Societies

Abstract

Using new robust matching methods for making causal inferences from survey data, I demonstrate that there are profound differences between how voters behave in advanced democracies versus how they behave in new electoral democracies. The problems of voter ignorance and inattentiveness are not as serious in advanced democracies as many analysts have suggested but are of grave concern in new democracies. Citizens in advanced democracies are able to accomplish something that citizens in fledgling democracies are not: inattentive and poorly informed citizens are able to vote like their better informed compatriots and hence need to pay little attention to political events such as election campaigns in order to vote as if they were attentive. The results from the U.S. (which rely on various National Election Studies) and Mexico (2000 Panel Study) are reported in detail. Results from other countries are briefly reported. “The people should have as little to do as may be about the government. They lack information and are constantly liable to be misled.” —Roger Sherman, June 7, 1787 at the Federal Constitutional Convention (Collier 1971) “In a crowd men always tend to the same level, and, on general questions, a vote, recorded by forty academicians is no better than that of forty water-carriers.” —Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd (1896, 200)