Can biased polls distort electoral results? Evidence from the lab

We introduce a new methodological approach for studying the effect of biased polls on election outcomes and apply it to set experiments with 375 participants. Voters may observe learn about bias by playing multiple voting rounds. While in control conditions, are unbiased, treatment participants view only poll results where particular candidate’s vote share is largest. This candidate consistently elected more often treatments than controls, because robustly distort voters’ expectations shares. holds after eighteen rounds, out which first three practice but somewhat weakly our main voters explicitly informed bias.