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.