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Measuring Voters' Knowledge of Political News

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  • Prat, Andrea
  • Angelucci, Charles

Abstract

We propose a methodology to measure knowledge of news about recent political events that combines a protocol for identifying stories, a quiz to elicit knowledge, and the estimation of a model of individual knowledge that includes difficulty, partisanship, and memory decay. We focus on news about the Federal Government in a monthly sample of 1,000 US voters repeated 11 times. People in the most informed tercile are 97% more likely than people in the bottom tercile to know the main story of the month. We document large inequalities across socioeconomic groups, with the best-informed group over 14 percentage points more likely to know the typical story compared to the least-informed group. Voters are 10-30% less likely to know stories unfavorable to their political party. Also, each month passing lowers the probability of knowing a story by 3-4 percentage points. We repeat our study on news about the Democratic Party primaries.

Suggested Citation

  • Prat, Andrea & Angelucci, Charles, 2020. "Measuring Voters' Knowledge of Political News," CEPR Discussion Papers 15222, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15222
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    Cited by:

    1. Sergei Guriev & Daniel Treisman, 2019. "Informational Autocrats," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(4), pages 100-127, Fall.
    2. Sarah Schneider-Strawczynski & Jérôme Valette, 2021. "Media Coverage of Immigration and the Polarization of Attitudes," PSE Working Papers halshs-03322229, HAL.
    3. Jacopo Perego & Sevgi Yuksel, 2022. "Media Competition and Social Disagreement," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(1), pages 223-265, January.

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