Voting in the Dark
electoral behavior
strategic voting
asymmetric information
media trust
How do beliefs about media partisanship influence how uninformed voters vote? I present theory and experimental evidence showing that beliefs about the political alignment of news media and its audience shapes whether uninformed voters decide to abstain or guess in down-ballot elections. I find that uninformed voters strategically guess rather than abstaining when they believe informed elites have misaligned preferences. Across three studies, the strategic behavior is more consistent among Trump voters than among Harris voters, resulting in a down-ballot advantage.