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Many studies document positive relationships between political information and campaign participation, but none investigates the relationship between information and interelection change in campaign participation. While studies of "floating voters" document negative relationships between information and floating, the author notes that activists are better informed than voters and investigates the relationship between knowledge and change in participation, comparing the process among voters and activists. The author shows low-information citizens enter and exit the electorate, while high-information citizens enter and exit the activist pool. The author concludes with an optimistic assessment of democratic change based on the theory that well-informed activists influence floating voters.

The debate between which model, directional or proximity, better describes citizens' political behavior engages scholars because the former constitutes a serious challenge to long-standing, Downsian, spatial logic. Despite an engaging series of empirical tests, scholars comparing the two models continue to disagree about which model performs better. Noting experimental methods remain conspicuously absent from methods deployed to date, the author describes an experiment designed to settle key assumption debates and measure subjects' reactions to candidates in contexts in which the models make very different predictions. The author reports results vindicating Downs's assertion that proximity matters and direction does not.

This article analyzes opinions about abortion, racial, and social welfare policies, comparing their determinants among citizens with different levels of political information over the past several decades. Hypothesizing that growing elite partisan polarization may have exacerbated the political implications of differences in political awareness, the authors examine how increasing clarity of party -- policy linkages among political elites influences party -- policy linkages in the mass public. The results show that only the well informed responded to the growing elite polarization by becoming more partisan in their opinions. Apparently, in the absence of the motivation to develop coherent opinions, even a simplification of the political environment does not close the gaps between those who are more and less aware about politics. Adapted from the source document.

This article analyzes opinions about abortion, racial, and social welfare policies, comparing their determinants among citizens with different levels of political information over the past several decades. Hypothesizing that growing elite partisan polarization may have exacerbated the political implications of differences in political awareness, the authors examine how increasing clarity of party—policy linkages among political elites influences party—policy linkages in the mass public. The results show that only the well informed responded to the growing elite polarization by becoming more partisan in their opinions. Apparently, in the absence of the motivation to develop coherent opinions, even a simplification of the political environment does not close the gaps between those who are more and less aware about politics.