Who's "political IQ" is higher?
PEW Research has a computer survey (nonrandom) on political IQs available here. If you want to do the survey, I suggest you do it before you click on the picture above. Generally men and those with the most education do better on the survey. I wouldn't have guessed where older or younger people would have out preformed each other. Older people seem to be much more likely to correctly identify people and younger people seem more likely to identify flags and symbols.
Yet, these are trivial questions. If only 57% can identify China's flag or 55% can identify who is the attorney general, I can only imagine that a much smaller percent would correctly guess the content of a particular law.
posted by John Lott at 11:50 PM
2 Comments:
"...I can only imagine that a much smaller percent would correctly guess the content of a particular law."
Very interesting point...
Lately I've been thinking that Reason-Rupe should execute a series of questions like these:
1. "Who are your state or local legislators?"
I suspect less than 50% can answer this.
2. "Can you name some of the political positions of your local reps/answer what there stance is on the following?"
Of the 50% or so that answer the previous question correctly, most should have no trouble with this.
3. "Do you know of, or have read any bills they have voted on?"
Probably less than 1% can answer this.
I could go on and on with questions (ones dealing with knowledge of the hundreds of federal regulatory agencies would be nice). I think public choice theory shows that the market beats electoral institutions when it comes to accountability.
Even if a consumer is ignorant, only they must suffer the consequences.
Sheesh... I correctly answered all of the questions, yet 92 percent of respondents did not.
Is ignorance what our politicians count on to remain in office?
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