Matthew Barnfield, Joseph Phillips, Florian Stoeckel, Benjamin Lyons, Paula Szewach, Jack Thompson, Vittorio Mérola, Sabrina Stöckli, Jason Reifler
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Quantitative forecasts have become increasingly prominent as tools for aiding public understanding of sociopolitical trends. But how much, and what, do people learn from quantitative forecasts? In this note, we show through a preregistered survey experiment that real forecasts of the 2022 French presidential election significantly affect expectations of the election result. The direction of that effect hinges on how the forecast is presented. Voters become more accurate and precise in their predictions of each candidate's vote share when given forecast information in the form of projected vote share. Forecasts presented as numerical probabilities make such expectations less accurate and less precise. When combined, the effects of both forms on vote share expectations tend to cancel out, but jointly boost voters' ability to identify likely winners. Our findings have implications for the public communication of quantitative information.
期刊介绍:
Published since 1937, Public Opinion Quarterly is among the most frequently cited journals of its kind. Such interdisciplinary leadership benefits academicians and all social science researchers by providing a trusted source for a wide range of high quality research. POQ selectively publishes important theoretical contributions to opinion and communication research, analyses of current public opinion, and investigations of methodological issues involved in survey validity—including questionnaire construction, interviewing and interviewers, sampling strategy, and mode of administration. The theoretical and methodological advances detailed in pages of POQ ensure its importance as a research resource.