The Myth of the (Ir)rational Voter? Theoretical and Methodological Advancements for Studying Voter Rationality

According to democratic theory, it is of central importance that voters are rational; that they have stable preferences and beliefs that are well-founded. However, the idea of voter rationality has come under serious attack in the last two decades.

Prominent scholars argue that voters blindly follow their favored political parties, have strong cognitive biases, and are prone to believe misinformation. As a consequence of this, some leading researchers even argue that we should abandon democracy altogether.

We believe that scholars jump to conclusions when they recommend such dramatic measures in the face of alleged voter irrationality.

We argue that researchers arrive at conclusions about voter irrationality by holding voters to an impossible ideal that few scholars themselves would live up to.

Much of the presented empirical evidence in favor of this bleak picture is in fact inconclusive and many studies in the field are surprisingly uninformative about the questions they purport to investigate.

This project improves on the state of the art by theoretically and methodologically incorporating insights from the theory of bounded rationality.

Our goal is to replace a naïve notion of “perfect rationality” with a practical rationality that is compatible with the capacities possessed by real people.

The project includes three empirical studies that are designed to remedy the shortcomings of the previous literature and give voters a fair chance to reclaim their rationality.