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Confused voters vote ‘no’ on initiatives. While this is apparently common
knowledge, as evidenced by its regular assertions in the literature (Hyink 1969, Magleby
1984, Bowler and Donovan 1998, Higley and McAllister 2002, Goldsmith 2004) and
routine anecdotal quotes by campaign consultants (Magleby and Patterson 1998), there is
scant empirical evidence of this claim and relatively flimsy theoretical explanations for
this supposed phenomena (Lowenstein 1982). Though a number theories suggest how
and why voters become confused, the resulting ‘no’ votes that are assumed to occur have
not been empirically verified.
This paper begins to assess these claims. These initial findings suggest that the
current conventional wisdom may not be wholly correct. First, if confusion is
conceptualized broadly, the conventional wisdom about confused voters being more
likely to vote ‘no’ on initiatives appears to be incorrect. In comparison to other levels of
information and policy preferences, broadly conceived confused voters seem to respond
to the choices presented to them similar to everybody else. However, certain forms of
confusion, under certain circumstances can have a meaningful impact on individual
decision making. Therefore, the second, and perhaps more important finding of this
analysis is that confusion needs to be looked at in all of its forms. Confusion is not
simply one state of mind that results in consistent outcomes. The next section discusses
current theories of confusion and voting. The second section describes how these
concepts are measured, followed by a description of the research design and data
collection techniques. The final sections discuss the results and suggest potential avenues
for future research.
Convention