Ignorance Drives Political Overconfidence

People with lower measured political knowledge tend to report greater confidence in their political judgments and worse metacognitive accuracy. The effect was observed in a 2021–2022 sample where overconfidence was strongest among low‑knowledge participants and was larger for self‑identified conservatives. — If low knowledge reliably produces high confidence, correcting misinformation and designing civic education must target metacognition as well as facts to reduce political polarization and bad voting decisions.