Worst of the Bunch: Visual Comparative Benchmarks Change Evaluations of Government Performance

Benchmarking theories argue voters use information about other countries’ performances, usually on the economy and obtained through experience or media, to evaluate their own governments. Yet existing observational evidence is relatively fragile and struggles to distinguish how people become more knowledgeable. Using a pre-registered experiment, we showed UK respondents a chart displaying the UK’s exceptionally high cumulative COVID-19 deaths either in isolation or alongside European countries with fewer deaths. Mimicking widely-circulated charts, this visual treatment enhances our study’s external validity and tests the media-based channel for benchmarking. 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 evaluations among respondents with high political trust. Our study shows international comparisons in visual forms can change domestic opinion, and on matters beyond strictly economic performance.