Who is Misinformed About the EU?

Since the Brexit referendum, concerns have grown about citizens being misinformed about the European Union, and previous research has shown that the misinformed—those who hold inaccurate beliefs with high confidence—are especially likely to prefer to leave the EU. Against this background, this chapter examines the misinformed and characterizes their social and political profile as well as their information environment. To do so, we rely on data from surveys conducted in eight EU Member States (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Spain) at the 2019 European Parliamentary election, which included a newly designed item battery to measure EU knowledge. The results show that being misinformed is most prevalent among older and less-educated citizens. However, even more notably, it is associated with far-right ideological extremity in conjunction with strong political interest, pointing to motivated reasoning as an underlying mechanism. Furthermore, and contrary to expectations based on the notion of echo chambers, the misinformed seem to be exposed to opposing views and frequently encounter disagreement in personal discussions, yet without this leading to greater ‘enlightenment’ or understanding. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for EU politics.