Voter Ignorance
A Kaiser poll (pdf) finds that 22% of respondents believe the health care reform bill has been repealed, and another 26% don’t know. (HT: Dispatches and The Daily Dish)
Now I realize that the majority in the poll do realize, correctly, that the health care bill is still law. But consider that even the 22% is more than the gap between those who support and those who oppose the law. The question this raises for me is just how meaningful the rest of the poll responses can be, when answered by people who aren’t at all acquainted with it.
Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. in his book Preserving Democracy (published by my company Energion Publications) notes another poll:
A key reason is that while most people know who the President is*, a significant number of voters have no clue about Congress. In a Zogby poll of those who voted for Obama conducted shortly after the election, less than half, 42.6 percent, even knew that Congress was controlled by the Democrats and 36.5 percent actually believed that the Republicans were in control.224 In a USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted just after the election, 28 percent of those asked said they had never heard of Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, while Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House was better known, as only eight percent226 had never heard of her (pp. 208-209).
These are not matters subject to opinion. I often hear people called ignorant because they don’t agree with certain conclusions. Such accusations only reflect badly on the accuser. But whether a law has been passed or which party is in control of congress are not matters of opinion.
No wonder polls tend to vary wildly and people’s votes often seem to contradict their values.
Related articles
- Poll: Barely Half Of Americans Know Health Care Law Hasn’t Been Repealed (alternet.org)
- Voters credit Obama for economy upswing (alternet.org)
- Rove: Voters Do Care About the Deficit and Oppose Obamacare (online.wsj.com)
- 22% live in a fantasy world. No wonder our system is broken. (amanwithaphd.wordpress.com)
Often when I read about a public opinion poll, I wish the pollster would ask more questions to clarify what the respondents are actually saying. Does this 22% not understand that the House vote against the Affordable Care Act is not law unless the Senate and President agree or is their knowledge of what’s going on in Washington so vague that they don’t know who actually voted and took whatever they heard as a final repeal or did they not understand the question was about complete repeal and not just some step along the way?
How many voters don’t watch cable news, don’t read a newspaper, at least not well enough to be up to date about politics, or don’t know enough to understand either of those, the way my Dad was with protests against the Vietnam War? Dad didn’t understand why these protests happened, apart from his suspicions about Commie outside agitators, but he saw the images on network news and knew this was wrong. Someone should stop this! He stayed up all night on election day 1968 because he thought Nixon might be the person to do it. It gave him hope.
Is it OK if poorly informed voters vote their false hopes and other prejudices? There’s an elitist part of me that says no, a democratic part of me that says yes. Since I have no power on this issue, I haven’t tried to reconcile this conflict in me.
One thing I do know is this is nothing new. My guess would be it was actually worse in the first 100 years of the US, that modern communications get at least some of the facts out to everyone, if only in pictures. I wonder what a historian would say.
Whatever the trend is, cultural evolution has not punished countries with ignorant voters enough to get rid of this problem or even show obvious improvement. Liars in the media are rarely punished. Ignorant voters don’t seem to learn from their mistakes. If a politician fails them, it’s seen as deception or some other evil on the part of the politician, not the bad votes that elected that politician.
Which direction is education going as far as educating everyone enough to be responsible voters? Which direction is religion going as far as the values that direct voters? I don’t suppose those are simple facts.
One can believe that God will direct culture toward what’s best or that cultural evolution will give people the culture they deserve. One can find hope and despair either way. I go with hope. If I need to find facts to justify that hope to someone else, I’m sure I could find some to fit my prejudice. It’s not that even the most educated and informed of us are all that rational about our choices.
Part of the problem is the way the news networks cover politics, making an effort to let the two major parties have their say, but not making much effort to fact-check them, and even less effort to challenge them directly even when their statements are demonstrably false.
And on top of that, the cable news networks devote so much time to their own pundits (Fox and MSNBC) or to entertainment (everyone else) that they don’t have time for real journalism. So people may see the news and think they know the story, when all they have really heard is political spin.