Do voters vote in line with their policy preferences?-The role of information

Abstract

In this article, I investigate how political information affects voting behavior. Specifically, I test (i) if more informed voters are more likely to vote for their closest politicians; and (ii) if this translates into a bias on the aggregate level. To do so, I use a set of Swedish individual survey data on the preferences for local public services of both politicians and voters, which provides an opportunity to investigate how information affects voters' ability to match their preferences with those of their politicians. The results indicate that more informed voters are more likely to vote for politicians with similar preferences for local public services and, on the aggregate level, that the left-wing parties would have received 1-3 percentage points fewer votes if all voters had been equally well-informed.