News avoidance and congruent voting. Results of an electoral panel study in Belgium

Abstract There is a strong consensus in the literature that political sophistication is associated with ‘correct voting’, i.e., the ability to identify the political party that is closest to one’s own political preferences (Lau & Redlawsk, 2006). Since the theory was first formulated two decades ago, however, patterns of news consumption have changed dramatically. Not only is there a massive transfer from print to online formats, but a growing an increasing part of the population has adopted a pattern of ‘news avoidance’. This increasingly prevalent phenomenon leads to a reconsideration of the traditional relation between political interest, political knowledge, news consumption, and the ability to cast an ideologically congruent vote. One of the key elements of news avoidance is the assessment that traditional news is no longer considered as relevant or salient by a substantial number of citizens. What is not yet clear is to what extent this attitude is related to electoral outcomes. Our analysis is based on the results of the BelREP panel survey that was conducted to coincide with the June 2024 elections in Belgium. More specifically we investigated to what extent news avoidance limits ideologically congruent voting, controlling for conventional indicators of political sophistication. The results indicate that news avoidance has a detrimental effect on congruent voting, especially among respondents with low levels of political knowledge.