THE IMPLICATION OF POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE ON AGGREGATE ELECTION RESULTS

Abstract

Political knowledge is a key concept in research on democracy, elections, and political behavior.1 While several studies that examine political knowledge’s effects on the aggregate election results have been conducted, none of them compare knowledge effects across types of elections. In this thesis the aim was to examine whether political knowledge affects the aggregate election results, both party-choice and turnout, differently depending on electoral contexts in terms of national parliamentary elections (first order elections) or EP elections (second order elections). I am also interested to see whether the increased politicization of the EU after 2009 registers significant knowledge effects. I use multinomial logistic regression and simulations for the 2010 and 2014 parliamentary elections and the EP elections of 2009 and 2014. The results show an increased level of political knowledge in line with the normative ideal of ‘fully informed’ voters does not affect the Swedish aggregate election result (party-choice) in the EP elections to a greater extent than in the parliamentary elections. Additionally, the results indicate that an increased level of political knowledge in line with the normative ideal of ‘fully informed’ voters does affect the Swedish aggregate election result (party-choice and turnout) in the EP elections after 2009 to a lesser extent. This result points to an increase in political knowledge about the EU, potentially as a result of the increased politicization after the euro crisis.