Large parts of the electorate stayed ignorant of candidates’ policy differences.

Evidence

The public, when aggregated, had little trouble seeing that Reagan was well to the right of Carter on every one of these issues. … Of course, many did. Table 9.4 displays the proportion, corrected for guessing, of the public who positioned Reagan to the right of Carter on three central policy questions as well as on the liberal-conservative continuum. The proportions are given for samples taken in January, June, and October of 1980. First, observe the overall levels; substantial numbers of the electorate, even in the end, remained unaware of the candidates’ policy differences. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1719

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the knowledge-gap hypothesis (Tichenor et al.) and broader literature on political ignorance summations.