13:15 - 15:30
Friday-Panel
Chair/s:
Franziska Quoß
Discussant/s:
Jordi Muñoz
Meeting Room F

Yue Guan
Measuring Multidimensional Constructs through Typology: A Concept-Driven Clustering Approach

Daniel Bischof, Roman Senninger
The Effects of Sophisticated Political Communication: Evidence from a Large-Scale Survey Experiment

Maarja Lühiste, Javier Sajuria
Explaining political engagement with political knowledge: The problem with the counterfactual

Albert Falcó-Gimeno, Jordi Muñoz, Roberto Pannico
Identifying the causal effect of terrorism on voting behavior: Evidence from multiple unexpected terror events during surveys
Explaining political engagement with political knowledge: The problem with the counterfactual
Maarja Lühiste 1, Javier Sajuria 2
1 Newcastle University
2 Queen Mary University of London

Past survey research suggests a strong link between voter competence and political engagement. People who are more informed are shown to be more engaged with politics. These conclusions have been drawn by comparing political information survey questions where the individuals who gave the correct answer(s) to respondents who either gave the wrong answer(s) or opted for the Don’t Know. Yet, past research offers little insight to the reliability of this combined counterfactual of political knowledge. This is mostly due to the underlying assumption, particularly in close-ended questions, that those who give the wrong answer can be considered as uninformed as the respondents who admit to not knowing. We theorise that what links political knowledge to political engagement is not only the possession of information, but also the perception of being informed. This leads us to question if respondents who gave the incorrect answer are the perfect counterfactual for those who are deemed well-informed when explaining political engagement. Our results show that political knowledge literature cannot ignore the role of “false” knowledge. People who give incorrect answers are more similar to those who we consider as informed, when it comes to political participation and interest, than those who admit to simply not knowing.