How to Be a ‘Good Voter’: Examining How Voters View Each Other’s Duties and Performance During Elections in Four Countries.

There is now significant literature on how citizens make decisions during elections and their attitudes towards various actors. However, there is a glaring omission: how citizens view each other. While there is literature examining attitudes to voter turnout and abstention, we know very little about what citizens expect of each other prior to voting. In other words, do people ascribe certain responsibilities to their fellow citizens during elections or expect them to engage with campaigns in certain ways? For example, are there certain things we expect each other to do in order to reach an informed vote? We seek to understand if people expect their fellow citizens to gain information during campaigns in ways that align with important democratic norms, namely, truthfulness, civility, and discursive inclusion. This is important because the quality of information-seeking and campaign engagement is likely to influence our attitudes to whether voters should abstain or not. Indeed, this will also influence attitudes to democracy more generally because, if citizens are viewed as making decisions in less competent and informed ways, or they are perceived as falling short of one’s expectations, then people may have less faith in the wisdom of election outcomes. For each norm (truthfulness, civility, and discursive inclusion), we examine the extent to which people expect each other to collect information and engage with campaigns in ways that align with these norms. We also examine whether these injunctive expectations differ depending on how much effort is required of people. Thus, we examine if there are differences in injunctive expectations for more active and passive ways of aligning with these norms. However, while people may have certain expectations of their fellow citizens, it is an open question whether these expectations are met. Consequently, we also ask descriptive questions that probe the extent to which people perceive their fellow citizens to act in these norm-compliant ways. We ran a survey in the US, UK, Italy, and Germany in early 2025 using YouGov. This survey examined the extent to which respondents believed their fellow citizens ought to live up to both active and passive versions of the norms and how common it was for citizens to do so. Across all norms, we found that citizens tend to have high normative expectations of each other, but substantially lower descriptive norms. Thus, while citizens have high expectations of how we should gain information and engage with campaigns, they do not think these expectations are being met. Importantly, we also find that these unmet expectations have a significant negative influence satisfaction with democracy overall. This means that our attitudes to democracy are shaped by our views of each other, not just by our views of parties or politicians. Indeed, these significant gaps in how we expect our fellow citizens to become informed and how they actually do is undermining people’s contentment and satisfaction with the democratic system.