Opinion Polls, Information Effects and Political Equality: Exploring Ideological Biases in Collective Opinion

Much of the recent literature about political knowledge and public opinion concludes that the low information levels of the American public are benign to the workings of democracy. However, this study finds that the information resources possessed by rival publics are critical determinants of how loudly their preferences are voiced in policy‐oriented survey questions. Ill‐informed respondents tend to select “no opinion” more frequently and, when they provide responses, answer more randomly than the well informed. Because of this, numerically small publics who have large proportions of well‐informed constituents can significantly influence the frequency marginals of information‐dependent questions. As informed persons also tend to be affluent, respondents from higher income groups can act as “informed minorities” that cause opinion marginals to overstate the magnitude of economically conservative opinion in a population.