The researchers found that a large portion of the electorate does not hold policy preferences that perfectly match their ideological self-placement. This mismatch was especially common among people who identified as right-leaning. The data showed that forty-three percent of self-identified right-leaning voters actually supported mostly left-leaning policies. Only 11% of left-leaners holding majority-right positions.

Providing participants with explicit information about the candidates’ policy positions did not meaningfully change how much the participants relied on the candidate’s ideological label.

All of the plaques told the same tale, that a small group of “hooligans” (baotu 暴徒) and “people who don’t know the truth” (bu ming zhenxiang de ren 不明真相的人) had been duped by scurrilous foreign elements who had clouded people’s minds and instigated a “counter-revolutionary rebellion” (fangeming baoluan 反革命暴乱).