The Making of the Informed Voter: A Split-Ballot Survey on the Use of Scientific Evidence in Direct-Democratic Campaigns

Literature claims that scientific evidence makes better democracies. This paper analyses whether and which voters choose empirical evidence in the form of policy evaluation results when informing themselves about issue-specific votes. The analysis is based on a split-ballot survey where participants chose media items with different content to make a decision on a specific issue. Results show that voters do indeed choose evidence-based information, especially if their involvement with the issue is high and if they are well educated and that they choose a higher amount of such information if they are also politically engaged. In a setting that fosters political engagement and provides policy-relevant information, the findings imply that voters want to be informed when making a democratic issue choice. Involved and engaged voters might be a solution to sceptics against direct democracy out of fear of uninformed decisions and post-factual populism.