Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution blogs on an Alan Krueger New York Times piece that reports on the latest research by Larry Bartels* on the effects of what he describes as “uninformed preferences” on voters’ decisions. Alex has some interesting thoughts on the substantive meaning of Bartels’ research, as does Robert Garcia Tagorda.

For what it’s worth, Bartels’ most famous piece on the topic (“Uninformed Votes: Information Effects in Presidential Elections,” American Journal of Political Science, February 1996) concluded that low levels of information in the electorate had actually benefitted Democrats in presidential elections over the history of the ANES up to that point (I recall that this advantage gained the party an average of around 2% of the vote); that conclusion, however, may be time-bound.