Do Visual Benchmarks Change Government Evaluations? Survey Experimental Evidence from the UK

Governments, policy-makers, and media increasingly use quantitative materials including data and visualizations for strategic and political reasons. The availability and accessibility of datasets on a wide range of topics enables comparison among groups via  rankings and indices—instruments of governance which, in turn, can shape how citizens perceive and evaluate their own governments.

This mechanism, sometimes called “benchmarking,” originated in economics as a means of explaining how voters assign responsibility for past economic performance. Theoretically, voters pay attention to retrospective information about their country’s performance compared to peers, and subsequently reward or punish incumbents accordingly. While it has gained traction in political science and public administration with promising results, it is unclear whether it works beyond strictly economic matters that are nevertheless politically important.

In a pre-registered experiment, UK respondents saw a chart displaying the UK’s exceptionally high cumulative COVID-19 deaths either in isolation or alongside European countries with fewer deaths. Aligned with pre-registered expectations, seeing the UK as “worst of the bunch” compared to UK-only data caused more negative government evaluations. Unexpectedly partisanship did not moderate the information effects, while exploratory tests revealed the visuals generated more negative evltluaions among respondents with high political trust. The study shows international comparisons in visual forms can change domestic opinion, and on matters beyond strictly economic performance.