Beliefs About Political News in the Run-up to an Election 

Abstract

This paper analyzes survey data from news quizzes conducted during and outside the 2020 U.S. presidential election, using a model of news discernment to examine the development of partisan-driven parallel information universes. The effect of partisan congruence on news discernment intensifies significantly in the run-up to the election. Away from Election Day, when faced with a true and a fake news story and asked to select the true story, individuals are 7 percentage points more likely to choose the true story if it favors their party; in the days just before Election Day, this rises to 17 percentage points.

Keywords: media, elections, partisanship, information

JEL Classification: L82, D72, D83, D90