Clinton VS  Trump : une analyse de l'élection de 2016 sous l'angle de l'information
Information plays an important role in some elections. Bartels evaluates the variable could influence significantly around 50% of all the elections in the United States. Despite a potentially decisive influence, few research has studied the variable in the context of the 2016 election. This thesis examines the level of information the average United States citizen possessed during an election that was all but ordinary. It is argued that the average voters’ behavior was influenced by their level of political information (H1) and that Trump was advantaged by a poorly informed public (H2). The scale of information the voters possessed was built with five questions of elementary political knowledge: the names of Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, Paul Ryan, Angela Merkel and John Roberts. A second scale is built from the grades the interviewers gave to the respondent sample who answered the questionnaire face to face. Simulations are made to compare the sample to a similar one if it was fully informed and if it had been unable to answer a single question. The fully informed sample shows that 56% of voters would have voted for the democratic candidate, which would have likely guaranteed the victory to Hillary Clinton; when the sample is unable to answer a single question, Donald Trump wins the popular vote with 52% and keeps the electoral college.
Donald Trump Hillary Clinton Information Sophistication United States Election