Voters in the Post-Truth Era: Have Voters’ Perception and Understanding of Politics Changed?

The concept of the post-truth politics has become increasingly relevant for the description of the current political development. However, the research related to post-truth predominantly targets the production, detection and proliferation of misinformation which is primarily connected to the role of elites (i.e. politicians, media, and public servants) in contemporary democracies. Inquiries studying citizens are far less common and mostly have a very specific goal: to capture the possible effects of misinformation on individual’s electoral behaviour. Our study aims to expand the current insights into individuals in the post-truth world and examine whether the voters’ understanding and perception of politics have changed during the emergence of the post-truth era. To address this question, the research utilizes the European Social Survey (Rounds 1 to 8) which captures almost two decades (2002-2018) of the attitudinal development in the 32 European countries (plus Israel). The main aim is to examine whether the new trends in the public discourse typical for the post-truth politics (e.g. lack of regard for the truth and verifiable claims, dominance of emotions instead of factual evidence, creation of ‘alternative’ facts) correlate with the changes in voters’ perception of (a) how hard it is to understand politics and (b) how hard it is to make mind up about political issues. We seek for a possible explanation of the spotted trends in the wider institutional (majoritarian vs. consensual democracies), social (homogeneous vs. heterogeneous societies), and political (presence of extreme and populist political parties) context of the European countries included in the ESS. Our preliminary results suggest that the voters’ perception and understanding of politics have slightly shifted over the last two decades. The changes correlate with media consumption habits and political participation of individuals. However, the institutional as well as social context of the countries included in the ESS does not seem to systematically influence voters’ understanding and perception of politics.