Party On, Dudes!
by MATTHEW ROBINSON
The American Spectator,
March 2002 - April 2002
Almost any look at what the average citizen knows about politics is bound to be
discouraging. Political scientists are nearly unanimous on the subject of voter ignorance.
The average American citizen not only lacks basic knowledge, but also holds beliefs that
are contradictory and inconsistent. Here is a small sample of what Americans
"know":
Nearly one-third of Americans (29 percent) think the Constitution guarantees a job.
Forty-two percent think it guarantees health care. And 75 percent think it guarantees a
high school education.
Forty-five percent think the communist tenet "from each according to his abilities,
to each according to his needs" is part of the U.S. Constitution.
More Americans recognize the Nike advertising slogan "Just Do It" than know
where the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is set forth (79
percent versus 47 percent).
Ninety percent know that Bill Gates is the founder of the company that created the Windows
operating system. Just over half (53 percent) correctly identified Alexander Hamilton as a
Founding Father.
Fewer than half of adults (47 percent) can name their own representative in Congress.
A 1998 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed that 56 percent
of Americans could not name a single Democratic candidate for president; 63 percent knew
the name "Bush," but it wasn't clear that voters connected the name to George W.
Bush.
According to a January 2000 Gallup poll, 66 percent of Americans could correctly name
Regis Philbin when asked who hosts Who
Wants to Be a Millionaire, but only 6 percent could correctly name Dennis Hastert when
asked to name the speaker of the House of Representatives in Washington.
Political scientists Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter studied 3,700 questions surveying the public's political
knowledge from the 1930s to the present. They discovered that people tend to remember or
identify trivial details about political leaders, focusing on personalities or simply
latching onto the policies that the press plays up. For example, the most commonly known
fact about George Bush while he was president was that he hated broccoli, and during the
1992 presidential campaign, although 89 percent of the public knew that Vice President
Quayle was feuding with the television character Murphy Brown, only 19 percent could
characterize Bill Clinton's record on the environment.
Their findings demonstrate the full absurdity of public knowledge: More people could
identify Judge Wapner (the longtime host of
the television series The People's Court) than could identify Chief Justice Warren Burger
or William Rehnquist. More people had heard of John Lennon than of Karl Marx. More
Americans could identify comedian-actor Bill Cosby than could name either of their
In 1986, the National Election Survey found that almost 24 percent of the general public
did not know who George Bush was or that he was in his second term as vice president of
the
All of this would appear to be part of a broader trend of public ignorance that extends
far beyond politics. Lack of knowledge on simple matters can reach staggering levels. In a
1996 study by the National Science Foundation, fewer than half of American adults polled
(47 percent) knew that the earth takes one year to orbit the sun. Only about 9 percent
could describe in their own words what a molecule is, and only 21 percent knew what DNA
is.
Apparent ignorance of basic civics can be especially dangerous. Americans often
"project" power onto institutions with little understanding of the Constitution
or the law. Almost six of 10 Americans (59 percent) think the president, not Congress, has
the power to declare war. Thirty-five percent of Americans believe the president has the
power to adjourn Congress at his will. Almost half (49 percent) think he has the power to
suspend the Constitution (49 percent). And six in 10 think the chief executive appoints
judges to the federal courts without the approval of the Senate.
With most voters unable to even name their congressperson or senators during an election
year, the clear winner is the establishment candidate. Studies by Larry Bartels at
Media polls are typically searching in vain for hard-nosed public opinion that simply
isn't there. Polls force people to say they are leaning toward a particular candidate, but
when voters are asked the more open-ended question "Whom do you favor for the
presidency?" the number of undecided voters rises. The mere practice, in polling, of
naming the candidates yields results that convey a false sense of what voters know. When
Harvard's "Vanishing Voter Project" asked voters their presidential preferences
without giving the names of candidates, they routinely found that the number of undecided
voters was much higher than in media polls. Just three weeks before the 2000 election, 14
percent of voters still hadn't made up their minds.
Surveys have repeatedly found that voters are remarkably ignorant about even simple,
dramatic features of the political landscape. The vast majority of voters cannot recall
the names of congressional candidates in the most recent election; they cannot use the
labels "liberal" and "conservative" meaningfully; they do not know
which party controls Congress; they are wildly wrong about elementary facts about the
federal budget; and they do not know how their congressmen vote on even quite salient
policy questions. In other words, they are generally incapable of rewarding or punishing
their congressman for his action on spending bills.
Ignorance can threaten
even the most democratic institutions and safeguards. In September 1997, the Center for
Media and Public Affairs conducted one of the largest surveys ever on American views of
the Fourth Estate. Fully, 84 percent of Americans are willing to "turn to the
government to require that the news media give equal coverage to all sides of
controversial issues." Seven-in-10 back court-imposed fines for inaccurate or biased
reporting. And just over half (53 percent) think that journalists should be licensed.
Based on sheer numbers-in the absence of the rule of law and dedication to the Bill of
Rights-there is enough support to put curbs on the free speech that most journalists
(rightly) consider one of the most important bulwarks of liberty.
Political science professor Rogan Kersh
notes, "Public ignorance and apathy toward most policy matters have been constant (or
have grown worse) for over three decades. Yet the same period has seen increasing reliance
on finely tuned instruments for measuring popular opinion and more vigorous applications
of the results in policy making." And here is the paradox in the Age of Polls:
Pollsters and political scientists are still unclear about the full consequences of
running a republic on the basis of opinion polls. The cost of voter ignorance is high,
especially in a nation with a vast and sprawling government that, even for the most
plugged-in elites, is too complicated to understand. Media polling that does not properly
inform viewers and readers of its limitations serves only to give the facade of a healthy
democracy, while consultants, wordsmiths and polling units gently massage questions, set
the news agenda and then selectively report results. It is like the marionette player who
claims (however invisible the strings) that the puppet moves on his own.