Don't know much about politics: the curse of the ignorant voter.(American voters' knowledge of current affairs)

THE breathless coverage that greets every new poll tracking the candidates' support delicately avoids the depressing reality of just whose opinion is being so scientifically sliced and diced. Despite the thousands of campaign ads and the oceans of spilled media ink over the past year, the ignorant voter outnumbers voters of all other stripes. That the public's knowledge of current affairs is in a sorry state is the only safe call we can make about this year's race.

"Most individual voters are abysmally ignorant of even very basic political information," George Mason law professor Ilya Somin concludes in a recent paper for the Cato Institute. Somin recognizes that what's well understood by political scientists is rarely acknowledged in political commentary. "The sheer depth of most individual voters' ignorance is shocking to observers not familiar with the research," he writes.

Although, as NATIONAL REVIEW readers, you can count yourselves among the 5 percent of voters who pay close attention to policy and politics. About 70 percent of Americans don't know that Congress recently passed a Medicare prescription-drug plan--the largest federal-entitlement expansion in decades. Sixty-five percent don't know that a ban on partial-birth abortion has been enacted, and almost 60 percent have heard either nothing (30 percent) or very little (28 percent) about the controversial Patriot Act. A majority is unable to estimate even roughly how many American troops have been killed in Iraq. More than 60 percent of the public doesn't know that big increases in domestic spending have had a substantial impact on the deficit.

The evidence revealing voter ignorance about the dominant issues in the current campaign is unsurprising; it tracks with the typical state of voters' knowledge. Prior to the hotly contested mid-term elections two years ago, only about a third of voters knew that Republicans controlled the House of Representatives. In 1994, a month after the Republicans' triumphant takeover of the House, 57 percent of Americans had never even heard of Newt Gingrich. Generally, slight majorities know which party controls the Senate, but 70 percent can't name either of their state's senators and, even at the height of a campaign, a large majority can't name any candidate running in their congressional districts. Less than half the public can define either "conservative" or "liberal" with any degree of accuracy.

There are comprehensive data about voters' knowledge during the 2000 presidential campaign. That year, the National Election Survey (NES), which has collected data for every election since 1948, and, according to Somin, is "considered the most thorough social scientific survey of the U.S. electorate," asked voters 31 questions covering basic political knowledge and simple information about the candidates and the campaign's hot topics. On average, fewer than half the questions were answered correctly. Large majorities had no idea whether spending on ...