Political Ignorance Revisited
By Stephen Earl Bennett
Surveys repeatedly show that Americans are woefully uninformed about government and public affairs. Large portions of the public lack even a modicum of information.
The 2004 American National Election Study, for example, asked eight relatively simple questions about politics. As figures 1 and 2 show, performance on some items was good. Eighty-six percent of respondents knew Dick Cheney’s political job, for example, 78 percent thought there were important differences between the two major parties, and 69 percent said that the Republicans were more conservative than the Democrats. Performance on other items was abysmal. Only 11 percent knew Dennis Hastert was Speaker of the House, and only 31 percent knew William Rehnquist was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
 
If the eight queries are combined into a political information (PI) scale, only 4 percent of the public was completely ignorant, or “know-nothings.” But only 7 percent got all eight correct. The mean score was 4.5 items correct, or 56 percent of all possible “points.” If we score Americans’ performance on a standard academic scale of 90 percent = A, 80 percent = B, 70 percent = C, and so on, nearly half of the public got an F!
A further test of political information is provided by the "likes and dislikes" questions, usually five of each, that the ANES asks about presidential candidates and the major political parties. In 2004, respondents were first asked, "Is there anything you like about George W. Bush?" Those who said yes were then asked to give up to five reasons for liking Bush. Next, they were asked, "Is there anything you dislike about George W. Bush?" Those who replied affirmatively were asked for up to five reasons for disliking the president. The same questions were repeated for likes and dislikes for John F. Kerry, and, just a few items later, for the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. In each instance, those who said they liked/disliked Kerry, the Democratic Party, or the GOP, were asked to provide five specific likes and dislikes. In each instance, most people were hard-pressed to state reasons. Typically, the averages (whether for likes or dislikes), were roughly one out of five.
The political information scale correlates with a summary measure of likes and dislikes of the major political parties’ presidential candidates, and with one of likes and dislikes of the parties themselves. Neither of the correlations is perfect, but they show that as scores on the PI scale change, scores on the two likes/dislikes measures change in a similar fashion.
In short, the 2004 ANES showed that most Americans were “out to lunch” when it came to basic information about politics. Although only a small percentage were know-nothings, most people had only a limited amount of information.
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