Imagine poor Chris Cillizza's surprise at learning that GOP primary voters are low-information

"The average voter is a low-information decider, making his or her choices about candidates based on often times incomplete or just plain wrong facts. The analysis of political races -- from the presidential race on down -- often assumes a level of involvement and information that the average voter simply lacks."

-- washingtonpost.com "Fix"-er Chris Cillizza, today in
"What do voters know about the GOP field? Very little"

by Ken

Well, it's nice to see Chris Cillizza so excited. I worry sometimes that he may become jaded, even burn out, in the face of the career he's made obfuscating American politics. In a general way, of course, I'm sympathetic, and share his general consternation at the information level of the average voter, though I have to wonder why it comes as such a surprise. And with the overall conclusion I've quoted above I can't muster any serious quarrel.

But when it comes to what it all means, or might mean if we had better information, Chris doesn't seem to have gotten much beyond the "Oh, those stupes!" level.

A new Pew Research Center poll suggests that most voters have little idea about even the most basic facts regarding the backgrounds of the men seeking the Republican presidential nomination this year.

Pew asked registered voters four questions: 1) "Which candidate served as the speaker of the House" 2) "Mitt Romney was the governor of ___" 3) "After Iowa and New Hampshire, the next primary is in ____" 4) "Which GOP candidate opposes U.S. involvement in Afghanistan"

Pretty basic stuff right? Um, no.

Just 43 percent of all registered voters -- these people are actually registered to vote -- got at least three of those questions right. Forty eight percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters got three right -- not surprising given that the questions were GOP-focused -- while 41 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaning independents knew the answers to at least three questions.

The data for individual questions is no less revealing/depressing. Just 59 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters were aware that Romney had served as governor of Massachusetts. (Come on people!) Half of Republicans didn’t know that South Carolina is the next state to vote after Iowa and New Hampshire (Shedding a tear...); a bare majority (51 percent) knew that Texas Rep. Ron Paul was the candidate in the field who opposes U.S. involvement in Afghanistan (Slightly more understandable).
Young people -- stunner! -- were the least informed about the candidates. Just 40 percent of registered voters aged 18-29 knew that Newt Gingrich was the speaker of the House -- and that was the best that age group did on any of the four questions! Only 32 percent knew Romney had served as governor of Massachusetts and less than one in four (24 percent) knew South Carolina was the next state to vote after Iowa and New Hampshire.

Sigh. (Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised given how Jay Leno has built an entire segment around how little the American public knows about, well, anything.) . . .

Well, I've looked at Pew's own report ("Many Voters Unaware of Basic Facts about GOP Candidates") -- quite hurriedly, I should say, and the data as presented strikes me as both more and less informative than Chris found it.

"Less" informative, most obviously, in terms of the four questions chosen to test respondents' "basic information" awareness. Huh? I suppose it can be useful for a prospective voter to know (1) and (2), though you'll note that the question doesn't give us any clue as to what information "yes" respondents might possess about either candidate. I don't see why it's important at all for the average voter to know (3). Which leaves (4), about which the level of caring is depressingly low -- and of depressingly little concern to the punditocratic and campaign-consulting classes.


"More" informative in that the data on which respondents have this so-called "basic information" isn't really any more encouraging..

Tea Party Republicans are far more knowledgeable about the candidates and the campaign than GOP voters who disagree or have no opinion of the Tea Party. Fully 73% of Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters who agree with the Tea Party correctly answered at least three questions and 53% correctly answered all four. Among non-Tea Party Republican voters, just 31% know the correct answers to at least three of the questions (18% answered all four correctly).

And yet these supposedly higher-information are perhaps the most dangerously deluded and misinformed segment of the present-day electorate. Functionally speaking, what they know about the functioning of the world around them is essentially nil.

Which disturbs me in the same way that I'm saddened by that You must have encountered that widely disseminated Thomas Jefferson quote about how as long as people read books he was hopeful (or did he actually say something more like "confident"? I'll have to dig the quote out, even though it depresses me) for the health of the republic. I think he believed this, and both he and James Madison believed strongly in education, believed that it would be both the underpinning and salvation of the healthy democracy they hoped they were hatching. I guess I might once have shared Jefferson's optimism.

But what none of us were factoring in was the power and threat of mis-education. Many far-right-wingers read voraciously. And with every word they read, they become more hopelessly clueless about what's going on around them. I guess you might say that there's "information" and "information."

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