Decades of research document persistent gender and racial gaps in political knowledge. However, a growing literature shows that these gaps depend on the content of political knowledge batteries. Building on these insights, I introduce a measure of welfare-state knowledge that captures understanding of what welfare programs do, whom they serve, and how political authority is organized. Using an original survey in the United States, I compare welfare-state knowledge with canonical political knowledge and find pronounced shifts in group-knowledge patterns. Women score lower on canonical items but outperform men on welfare-state knowledge, thereby reversing the gender gap. The racial gap narrows substantially in the welfare domain, with racial minorities scoring indistinguishably from white respondents. These findings challenge prevailing narratives about group-knowledge deficits by revealing domains of political expertise that canonical measures overlook and underscoring how measurement choices shape whose political experiences are represented in the study of public opinion.

Political knowledge is a key resource for democratic participation. But, it is unevenly distributed. White, male, affluent, and older citizens consistently demonstrate higher levels of policy knowledge. Membership in an issue public – a group with personal stakes in particular policies – may help narrow these gaps by fostering engagement among those most affected. Using a new, representative state survey of nearly 26,000 respondents, we examine knowledge of 10 salient state policies to assess whether issue-based engagement reduces entrenched inequalities. We find large knowledge disparities across class, race, gender, and age, mirroring broader political disparities. Issue public membership boosts issue-specific knowledge for some disadvantaged groups, especially LGBT individuals and women, but not uniformly. Advantaged members of issue publics, such as white or upper-class respondents, remain better informed than their less advantaged counterparts. These findings indicate that issue publics can mitigate, but not eliminate, policy knowledge disparities.

Voting advice applications (VAAs) are used by millions of voters, yet their causal effects on political knowledge, preferences, and behavior remain unclear. We present new evidence from two experiments conducted during the 2024 UK General Election: (1) a panel survey experiment that provides access to participants’ VAA advice, achieves high compliance with treatment assignment, and allows us to track outcomes over time; and (2) a concurrent field experiment embedded in a real-world VAA that allows us to assess the ecological validity of our findings. We find that VAA usage leads to durable changes in voters’ perception of how close they are to parties on policy issues, shifts party preferences in line with the advice received, and affects the vote choices of undecided voters. These results suggest that VAAs play an important role in election campaigns. However, we find no evidence that VAAs increase electoral participation.

Voters with greater political knowledge are more likely to participate and to make judgements that advance their own interests. This raises a vital question about how such knowledge is distributed across citizens. In particular, how large is the gender gap in political knowledge among Japanese voters? Does measurement influence the observed gap? Using two large-scale online surveys conducted in 2024 and 2025 and fifteen face-to-face surveys fielded between 2000 and 2018, we first show that Japanese women answer questions on political institutions and leaders correctly at rates 10 to 15 percentage points lower than men. Using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems data Modules 2–4, we also show that the gender gap in Japan is comparable to that in other countries. We then demonstrate that the magnitude of the gender gap depends on how political knowledge is measured. Women are more likely to select DK, and the gap shrinks substantially when DK responses are excluded or when knowledge items related to women are included. Overall, the findings are consistent with those from other countries. While a gender gap in political knowledge is non-trivial in Japan, its size is strongly shaped by the measurement context.

Are people who are more knowledgeable and interested in trade policy more likely to change their preferences regarding trade agreements compared to their less knowledgeable and less interested counterparts on receiving new information from politicians? This study responds to this question by developing a framework that distinguishes knowledge from interest and assesses it using an original survey conducted on voters during the 2020 US election campaign. Assessing whether information about trade agreements provided by political elites shifts individuals’ trade preferences and whether knowledge and interest condition susceptibility to such information reveals that people knowledgeable and interested in trade policy are less likely to change their original preference. Together, the results sharpen the existing theories by establishing knowledge and interest as moderators of trade opinion change in low-salience trade settings.

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) help voters make informed choices by aligning their policy preferences with party positions. This study examines whether VAA exposure enhances young citizens’ ideological knowledge – understanding political dimensions and party positions. A randomized experiment (n = 2308) in Belgium (Flanders) tested whether VAA exposure improved young voters’ ability to place a fictional party on the left-right axis. We replicate these effects in an additional observational study (n = 1221) tracking effects of natural VAA exposure during the campaign. We find that VAAs increase ideological knowledge, helping participants more accurately classify a fictional party as left- or right-wing. Exposure to a youth-targeted VAA has particularly strong effects. The impact is greater for politically less sophisticated individuals, suggesting an equalizing effect. These findings indicate that VAAs’ political learning benefits extend further than previously documented, contributing not only to policy-specific knowledge but also to a broader understanding of ideological structures.

Do gender quotas increase political knowledge? While some studies suggest that quotas can positively impact women's political engagement and participation, others find null or negative effects. This paper focuses on Western Europe and argues that the implementation of quotas serves as an attention and consciousness‐raising event, potentially enhancing awareness of the political sphere. To investigate this, I propose a novel research design that capitalizes on the (quasi) exogenous shock resulting from the introduction of gender quotas. By influencing symbolic representation, quotas may enhance women's sense of empowerment, equality and willingness to engage in politics. Furthermore, the impact is expected to be more pronounced among younger women due to the heightened political socialization experienced during adolescence. Thus, the institutional change brought about by quotas is anticipated to particularly boost political knowledge among (younger) women and subsequently narrow the gender gap. To examine this hypothesis, I analyse data from 1992 to 2018 from 12 countries, of which six implemented gender quotas. Using a hierarchical Bayesian model, I assess respondents' answers to knowledge questions. The findings indicate that the introduction of gender quotas in parliamentary systems has a positive effect on reducing the gender gap in political knowledge among younger individuals, while the effects are statistically insignificant for older citizens.

The aim of this study is to provide an empirical example of how an election-related empirical indicator of political knowledge can be constructed. Studies of political knowledge have shown that most citizens fall short of the democratic ideal in terms of their knowledge about politics. But according to critics it is unclear what the reference point for such conclusions has been. The critics say that indicators of political knowledge lack a transparent logic and connection to concrete political behavior. In this study two measures of political knowledge are compared: one is a general measure of political knowledge; the other is based on a specific analytical framework by Kuklinski and Quirk (2001). Both the aggregate distribution and the individual-level determinants of political knowledge are compared. The differences between the two measures are found to be minor. The findings suggest that although specific and theory-driven measures offer a nuanced view into the public's knowledge levels, general measures of political knowledge also provide a reliable understanding of what the public knows.

In civic education and political science classes, simulation games are increasingly recognised as a teaching tool to promote active learning, expecting them to enhance participants’ motivations and to convey transferable knowledge and skills. Furthermore, they have been described as a promising teaching approach with regard to the complex multi-level system of the European Union (EU). Empirical studies have underlined positive effects of simulation games; however, they usually either use purely qualitative or very small-N quantitative approaches. More systematic studies conducted recently didn’t focus on causes of the measured effects and have lacked depth due to a closed items design. The study presented here uses a mixed-method approach, analysing the effects of simulations of European Parliamentarian decision-making conducted with secondary school classes in Germany on students' political knowledge, motivations and attitudes. In addition to a standardised questionnaire with pre- and post-tests (N = 308), qualitative interviews were conducted (n = 12). The paper focuses on the relation between participants' conceptual changes and changes in perceived responsiveness of the EU. The results highlight relevant learning effects students experience in EU simulation games that are not yet captured appropriately by questionnaire studies and can stimulate the development of measurement tools for assessing process-oriented learning outcomes more adequately.

Minority governments are common across parliamentary systems, and a large body of literature has examined their stability and performance. Meanwhile, we know very little about how voters perceive this government type and whether they understand its political implications. We survey voters in Denmark, Germany, and Sweden, three European countries with varying degrees of exposure to minority governments, about their knowledge and perceptions of minority governments. We find that voters have knowledge levels comparable to those about the role of political parties, and that this is independent of the respective prevalence of minority governments in each country. Informed voters express stronger preferences for majority governments. However, minority governments are associated with specific positive representational traits, specifically with the impression that such governments listen more to the demands of all voters, and general perceptions are stronger for knowledgeable voters. The findings have implications for how elites can formulate arguments in favour or against minority governments that may resonate with voters.

Does the political knowledge gender gap extend to knowledge about federalism, an institutional arrangement that increases the cognitive demand on voter knowledge? We answer this question by drawing upon data from three national surveys administered in Canada between 2020 and 2022. We find evidence of a gap between men and women in terms of their knowledge of the distribution of authority across the three orders of government. Across four of our knowledge items, the gender gap favouring men gets smaller as the issues vary from the federal to provincial to municipal level. Knowledge about national defence and sewage/water, however, do not fit this pattern. These results suggest future research should examine whether the gendered knowledge gap with respect to federalism can be explained by which levels of government have responsibility over areas of jurisdiction that have a strong effect on or are used by women on a daily basis.

Received wisdom in political science holds that informed citizens are better able to develop coherent, stable policy preferences. However, past research fails to differentiate between the effects of information and cognitive ability. I show that, for people with low levels of ability, consuming more political information predicts lower levels of ideological constraint and response stability. This effect is driven by relatively technical issues, suggesting that attempts to inform the electorate may backfire by overwhelming some voters. More broadly, these results suggest that an increasingly saturated information environment may exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, differences in political sophistication.

Political scientists have largely come to a consensus that “most citizens are politically uninformed” (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1997), but even with increased attention to state-level representation and electoral behavior, political scientists know surprisingly little themselves regarding what Americans know about state politics. Past studies of state political knowledge examine narrow domains of knowledge and make few comparisons between individuals’ understanding of national and state politics. To provide a more comprehensive account of Americans’ state political knowledge, I conducted a novel national survey that included over 30 political knowledge questions. In a descriptive and exploratory analysis, I show Americans demonstrated more knowledge about who their Governor is but less knowledge about who represents them in the state legislature, state government institutions, and the state economy, particularly compared to their knowledge of federal politics. The different levels of political knowledge across different domains and levels of government raise concerns for statehouse democracy and should be considered before testing theories at the state level. To guide future research and surveys, I identify political knowledge questions that discriminate well between those who know little, some, and a lot about state politics across different domains of political knowledge.

The contemporary crisis in relation to constitutional literacy relates not to the lack of knowledge that citizens possess about fundamental constitutional texts, but to the considerable lack of development in relation to what constitutional literacy itself entails. This article accordingly unpacks the notion of constitutional literacy: its importance, its characteristics, and its variable nature. Using a comparative lens, the article invites reflection on the role we expect citizens to play in our democracies, and especially the associated knowledge and skills required for successful state performance. We suggest that constitutional literacy is exceptionally multifaceted and fluid in nature, which serves to make its conceptualization and measurement challenging endeavours, and certainly more so than the easy invocation of this notion may assume at first blush. In this regard, engaging with the constitutional text, while an integral component of constitutional literacy, is ultimately only one part of the puzzle.