Under conditions of imperfect information, competent incumbents increase spending in order to signal their type, thus raising government debt beyond that which is socially optimal. Proclivity to debt is reduced when the electorate is ideologically polarized because the vote-payoff to higher spending is reduced. Policy contrasts starkly with models of `strategic debt' wherein debt is predicted to increase with polarization. Using time-varying polarization measures generated from ideology data from party manifestos we find a sizable and statistically significant negative association between debt levels in OECD countries and ideological polarization in the electorate.