Misinformed About the Affordable Care Act? Leveraging Certainty to Assess the Prevalence of Misperceptions

According to some recent research, Americans hold a great deal of misinformation about important political issues. However, such investigations treat incorrect answers to quiz questions measuring knowledge as evidence of misinformation. This study instead defines misperceptions as incorrect answers that respondents are confident are correct. Two surveys of representative samples of American adults on the Affordable Care Act reveal that most people were uncertain about the provisions in the law. Confidently held incorrect beliefs were far less common than incorrect answers. Misperceptions were most prevalent on aspects of the law on which elites prominently and persistently made incorrect claims. Furthermore, although Americans appear to have learned about the law between 2010 and 2012, misperceptions on many provisions of the law persisted.