‘Low information voters’ are a crucial part of Trump’s support
By Richard Fording and Sanford Schram November 7 at 5:00 AM
Donald Trump’s campaign will be remembered for many reasons, not the least of which is his tenuous relationship to the truth. PolitiFact has repeatedly documented Trump’s unprecedented rate of false claims and in 2015 named him the recipient of the Lie of the Year Award.
Despite this, Trump’s support remains high in many states even as some of the most important Republican leaders have turned their backs on him. This has left many experts puzzled. Why do so many people continue to support Trump in the face of these false claims?
Many commentators have noted what Thomas Edsall has called the “great democratic inversion,” where voters have become more polarized by education — with less-educated voters gravitating to Trump. But focusing only on education obscures another key factor: whether voters have lower levels of knowledge about politics and less interest in using ideas to understand politics. These attributes do not simply reflect voters’ level of formal education.
Our research finds that Trump has attracted a disproportionate (and unprecedented) number of “low-information voters” to his campaign. Furthermore, these voters are more likely to respond to emotional appeals — whether about the economy, immigration, Muslims, racial relations, sexism, and even hostility to the first African American U.S. president, Barack Obama. They are the ideal constituency for a candidate like Trump.
We define low-information voters as those who do not know certain basic facts about government and lack what psychologists call a “need for cognition.” Those with a high need for cognition have a positive attitude toward tasks that require reasoning and effortful thinking and are, therefore, more likely to invest the time and resources to do so when evaluating complex issues. Those with a low need for cognition, on the other hand, find little reward in the collection and evaluation of new information when it comes to problem solving and the consideration of competing issue positions. They are more likely to rely on cognitive shortcuts, such as “experts” or other opinion leaders, for cues.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/07/low-information-voters-are-a-crucial-part-of-trumps-support/?wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1
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