HORSE-RACE POLLS AND AUDIENCE ISSUE LEARNING

Media critics often complain about too much coverage of ''horse-race'' polls. A common assumption sustaining this criticism is that such cov erage competes with issue coverage. We propose the opposite, that hors e-race polls might increase voters' attention to other election messag es, including issue information, which in turn leads to a better under standing of public policies. To test these competing theories, we cond ucted three studies during the 1992 presidential election: a controlle d experiment, a statewide one-time survey, and a three-county two-wave panel survey. Each of the studies reports a positive relationship bet ween horse-race polls and issue knowledge. The two surveys also report positive correlations between exposure or attention to polls and expo sure or attention to general election coverage, which in turn is posit ively correlated with issue knowledge.