Gordon S. Bergsten Department of Economics Dickinson College Michael E. Greenberg Department of Political Science Dickinson College Paper to be presented at the Annual Conference of The Public Choice Society Orlando, Florida, March 16 - 19, 1989.
Voters are uninformed and political campaigns are uninformative.
This is what economic theory predicts and what both research evidence and everyday experience seem to confirm. To some observers, these characteristics of voters and campaigns render election outcomes difficult to interpret on the one hand and of dubious significance on the other. Along with a growing number of other students of voting, we find this depiction of politics to be misleading. Although voters are, in a very real sense, rationally uninformed about much that transpires in the political realm, and although information made available during the campaign may be of poor quality, this need not imply either meaningless elections or unaccountable politicians. It may well be the case that the most relevant information for the voter is such that the information provided during campaigns, even in the best of all possible worlds, is largely irrelevant.