Happy Constitution Day! Annenberg Annual Civics Survey

[Dill]

(09-20-2018, 08:05 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: While they do, it's not just the working poor, or who we often perceive as the uninformed. Often, the more knowledgeable a person is of this sort of thing, the more partisan they become. The idea that a large electorate of informed voters provides the most democratic, responsive, representative government is based on faulty theories that just don't pan out in reality.

I see why you are saying this, if you been reading Sunstein and folks researching resistance to rational argument.  It has been found that on many political issues people with what we call "college educations" are more ready to dig in their heels when faced with counter-evidence to their political beliefs, however rationally presented.

But there may be two important qualifications here-- 1) the kind of "knowledge" in which one is knowledgeable is important. Some kinds do lead to more partisanship. Or to resistance to evidence-based and rational arguments. But I do not think all do. 2) How and about what and in what quantities the electorate is "informed" is also critical here.  Polls of Fox viewers have found they often know more about government, who the current House Whip is, and similar info, than their liberal counterparts.  But polls during and after the Iraq war showed that they were also more misinformed about causes and results of that war than their liberal counterparts.

I would argue that a large electorate of generally and CRITICALLY informed voters does provide the most democratic, responsive, representative government; and this has been born out since the 18th century. (There is a reason why dictatorships censor the press and education.)  It's pretty clear democracies have no chance without informed and educated voters.  Even if not a sufficient condition, they are certainly a necessary one.  

I would connect the success of democracy to literacy rates as well. This and my previous point are critical to studying and understanding the current alarming trend towards authoritarianism in democracies--including, perhaps most especially, our own.