Introduction

Recent U.S. history has shown the challenges our country faces translating an increasingly divided and hostile political culture into effective governance. Misinformation, or “fake news,” is often cited as a central cause of this strain due to its perceived power to blur the right course of action and drive Americans towards extreme political views or even acts of violence. The spread of misinformation has the potential to undermine our democracy—resulting in more extremists gaining power or malicious actors deceiving voters in ways that push the country toward ends that benefit only them.

However, while the power of misinformation is often taken as self-evident, it is less clear why it has become such a dominant force in our politics. Existing explanations tend to focus on the 24-hour news cycle, partisan news networks, the viral nature of social media and the echo chambers it creates, low levels of media literacy, and an absence of fact-checking or verification mechanisms, among many other factors. The rise of digital social media, in particular, is blamed for much of the prevalence of misinformation today.

But all of these narratives limit our ability to understand the problem. To have an effect, misinformation needs to be not just present in our media environment, but also attractive, useful, and beneficial to us as consumers. For some political actors who would use fake news to fool people for some ulterior motive, the benefit is clear. What is less clear is why misinformation might be appealing for the much larger portion of voters, who must be influenced by and willing to share it, for misinformation to have any substantial effect.

Drawing on recent research illustrating the many factors that determine our appetite for misinformation, this report makes the case that we need to consider our winner-take-all electoral system when we talk about misinformation. In particular, making the connection between winner-take-all elections, affective polarization, and misinformation can help spur structural solutions that weaken incentives to share and believe misinformation in the first place, and in doing so help drain the reservoir of misinformation instead of just plugging holes in the dam.

This report highlights the need for more research on how different voting methods shape incentives to create, share, and believe misinformation, and whether electoral reforms can weaken these incentives. It begins by explaining why misinformation is a problem for democratic systems and then reviews existing solutions for misinformation, clarifying why they fall short in fully accounting for the sources of misinformation. It then argues that we need to think about electoral systems when talking about misinformation, particularly because of how electoral systems can shape identity-based factors that increase susceptibility to misinformation. The report describes existing research that connects the winner-take-all system with heightened affective polarization and affective polarization with a greater likelihood of believing and sharing misinformation. It concludes by identifying areas that need more research to move our understanding of electoral systems and misinformation forward and recommends fruitful avenues for research.