Experimental Design
In this survey experiment, we investigate the belief formation of voting-age US adults on candidates' electability in congressional races. Respondents' familiarity with congressional candidates is likely to vary depending on their level of political awareness and their proximity with the state in which candidates are running. There are three sets of hypotheses we would like to test. The first concerns respondents' perceptions and whether these are systematically incorrect. We also check how this varies with respondents' self-reported level of political awareness and sources of information. The second line of inquiry centers on respondents' information acquisition: when given the choice, which candidates respondents prefer to receive additional information on, and how this additional information affects their perceptions. The third question is whether voters’ political engagement is correlated with their perceptions on which candidates are viable, e.g. whether voters are discouraged by beliefs that their preferred candidates are unlikely to win.