Why Voters Misplace Parties: Incognizance, Perceptual Deviation, and Institutional Effects

What the Study Asks

John H. Aldrich, Gregory S. Schober, Sandra J. Ley, and Marco Fernandez investigate why citizens disagree about where political parties sit on the left–right ideological scale. The paper asks how much of the disagreement stems from individual-level differences in knowledge and attitudes, party-level features, and features of political institutions such as electoral systems.

How the Authors Study It

The authors use comparative electoral-systems survey data and estimate multilevel models that nest individuals within parties and institutional contexts. To avoid bias from ignoring how respondents express lack of information, the models explicitly account for two distinct sources of variation: (1) nonresponse or failure to place parties on the left–right scale (a sign of incognizance), and (2) random or idiosyncratic deviations in reported placements when respondents do answer. This dual approach separates true perceptual noise from simple missingness.

Key Findings

• Individual-, party-, and institutional-level variables all contribute meaningfully to variation in citizens' perceptions of party placements on the left–right dimension.
• Treating nonresponse and random placement variation separately changes inferences about who misunderstands party positions and why.
• Both incognizance (an inability to locate parties on the left–right scale) and perceptual deviation (systematic differences between citizens' placements and benchmark positions) are significantly associated with how citizens evaluate parties on feeling thermometers.

Why It Matters

This work shows that disagreements about party ideology are not only measurement noise but reflect distinct informational and perceptual processes with real consequences for citizens' affective evaluations of parties. By modeling nonresponse and perceptual error together, the study provides a clearer picture of how political knowledge, party cues, and institutional context shape public understandings of ideological competition.