If you haven’t already seen it, I wholeheartedly recommend taking a look at Scott Winship’s post, and by extension, Stephen Earl Bennett’s longer piece, about voter sophistication. It’s almost overwhelmingly discouraging, but political observers need to fully appreciate just how little the typical person knows about politics. For my money, it’s the democratic flaw that trumps everything else.
As Winship explains, Bennett’s piece highlights how uninformed voters are easily misled. And based on the evidence, they’re really uninformed. Bennett’s research found that “most Americans were ‘out to lunch’ when it came to basic information about politics” in the most recent election year.
[I]n an intriguing finding, Bennett shows that consistency in positions taken across issue areas increases as political knowledge increases. Those who have little knowledge tend to have unconventional combinations of issue positions. If it is also the case that those with little political knowledge are less consistent in their positions on individual issues over time than other people are, then the result might be a sizeable constituency for demagoguery and misdirection. Bennett’s results imply that that bloc would be as large as one-third of the population. It seems important to separate these people out, to the extent possible, when analyzing characteristics of the electorate by, say, party or ideology. And it would be nice to know more about the positions they take on issues and the candidates they support.
With all due respect, I’m afraid Winship’s minor error is thinking these people have positions on issues, and can explain which candidates they support. Unfortunately, we know better.
Like Digby, I immediately thought of one of my favorite articles of the past few years, an item from Christopher Hayes in The New Republic after the ’04 race.
Hayes worked on League of Conservation Voters’ Environmental Victory Project this year, approaching people one at a time in areas known for high concentrations of undecided or persuadable voters. He was stationed in Dane County, Wisconsin, where he knocked on more than 1,000 doors. His experiences were stunning.
Members of the political class may disparage undecided voters, but we at least tend to impute to them a basic rationality. We’re giving them too much credit. I met voters who told me they were voting for Bush, but who named their most important issue as the environment. One man told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he thought that with Cheney, an oilman, on the ticket, the administration would finally be able to make us independent from foreign oil. A colleague spoke to a voter who had been a big Howard Dean fan, but had switched to supporting Bush after Dean lost the nomination. After half an hour in the man’s house, she still couldn’t make sense of his decision.
Then there was the woman who called our office a few weeks before the election to tell us that though she had signed up to volunteer for Kerry she had now decided to back Bush. Why? Because the president supported stem cell research. The office became quiet as we all stopped what we were doing to listen to one of our fellow organizers try, nobly, to disabuse her of this notion. Despite having the facts on her side, the organizer didn’t have much luck.
This matters in a democracy, but on a more partisan note, it also matters in a campaign context. Hayes noted, for example, the inherent advantage Bush had in appealing to people who knew next to nothing about politics. The president could emphasize his “worldview” and sidestep a failed record that voters weren’t aware of anyway. Kerry, meanwhile, identified issues and offered solutions to problems. This, of course, didn’t work. As Hayes noted, “[H]ow can undecided voters evaluate a candidate on issues if they don’t even grasp what issues are?”
This has been a pet issue of mine since undergrad, so forgive me for the lengthy post here, but I strongly believe that an uninformed electorate creates a dysfunctional democracy. As Digby put it, “We simply cannot adequately govern ourselves if a large number of us are dumb as posts and vote for reasons that make no sense.”
I’m obviously engaged in politics, and if you’re reading this, you are too. Not everyone shares our interests, and that’s fine. For that matter, most people are busy with their daily lives, and don’t have time to read eight newspapers a day. That’s fine, too.
But our system relies on a certain level of sophistication among the public, and there’s ample evidence that we’re not at that level. So, what do we do about it? If we go back to the article that prompted the discussion, Winship offers a fairly basic cultural proposal.
Americans are abysmally uninformed about politics, and it matters. If “knowledge is power,” it behooves friends of democracy to think of ways to increase what the average citizen knows about public affairs.
The surest way to enhance political information levels is to convince people to become more interested in politics. In 2004, the mean score on the PI scale for the least interested segment of the public was 1.7. Among the most interested, the mean score was 6.2.
Increasing political interest won’t be easy, however. One suggestion has been for schools to conduct more classes in civics or American history, but the link between the number of such classes taken K-12 and informed citizenship is extremely weak. Get-out-the-vote campaigns in the mass media have also been popular, but the people who most need such encouragement don’t read newspapers or watch the news on TV. “Kids Voting” programs may benefit some, but they tend to be too few in number around the country, and their effects are generally minor.
One possible solution is deliberative polls, as suggested by University of Texas professor James Fishkin. The 2004 ANES found, for example, that persons who reported discussing politics with family and friends were significantly better informed than those who eschewed political talk. It is likely that political information and political discussions are mutually reinforcing.
Another approach would be to show young people that apathy and ignorance have palpably negative consequences. Public spending on education, for example, is waning while outlays for benefits to the elderly — who are, on average, politically interested, knowledgeable, and engaged — are waxing. As public colleges and universities raise tuition to make up for diminished funding, students — and their parents, who usually pay the bills — ought to be interested.
Teaching young folk — and many of their elders — that they have a duty to be politically alert and informed, and that people benefit when they know what’s happening in the political world, will not be easy. Given information’s importance to a democratic citizenry, though, it might be worth trying.
I couldn’t agree more.