Risky Politics: Applying the Planned Risk Information Seeking Model to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

News coverage of the 2016 U.S. presidential election periodically framed the election in terms of risk. We sought to better understand the role of perceived risk and related emotional responses in shaping information seeking intent during the election. We turned to the planned risk information seeking model as our theoretical framework and tested the model using online panel data collected in the month preceding Election Day 2016. Given the divisive nature of the presidential campaign, we also conducted multigroup comparison using ideology as a grouping variable. The model shows excellent fit to the data, accounting for more than half of the variance in seeking intent for both conservatives and liberals. Most interesting was that anger was negatively related to seeking intent among the conservatives but not the liberals, suggesting a sort of shutdown among certain respondents. Overall, our results suggest that the model provides a theoretically rich starting place for the study of risk information seeking in the context of electoral politics and raises some interesting questions for future research.