An Overview of the State of Citizens' Knowledge About Politics

In a letter to W. T. Barry, James Madison wrote that "a popular government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both." Much like Madison's words to Barry, the title of this book Communicating Politics: Engaging the Public in Democratic Life-is based on two principal assumptions: that an informed public is crucial to democracy; and that the key to assuring such a public is the availability of engaging yet informative and accessible campaign communication. While many of the studies and essays contained in this volume are devoted to assessing, and making recommendations for improving, the current state of campaign communication, this chapter provides an overview of what Americans know about politics and why it matters. The information presented here draws heavily from my previous work in this area (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996). The literature on political knowledge provides fairly compelling evidence for five characterizations regarding what Americans know: (1) the average American is poorly informed but not uninformed; (2) aggregate levels of political knowledge have remained relatively stable over the past 50 years; (3) Americans appear to be slightly less informed about politics than are citizens of other comparable nations; (4) "average" levels of knowledge mask important differences across groups; and (5) knowledge is tied to many attributes of "good" citizenship. Disciplines Social Influence and Political Communication This book chapter is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/53 CHAPTER 2 Michael X. Delli Carpini An Overview of the State of Citizens' Knowledge About Politics In a letter to W T. Barry, James Madison wrote that "a popular government, without popular information or the means ofacquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both." Much like Madison's words to Barry, the title of this book"Communicating Politics: Engaging the Public in Democratic Life"-is based on two principal assumptions: that an informed public is crucial to democracy; and that the key to assuring such a public is the availability ofengaging yet informative and accessible campaign communication. While many of the studies and essays contained in this volume are devoted to assessing, and making recommendations for improving, the current state of campaign communication, this chapter provides an overview of what Americans know about politics and why it matters. The information presented here draws heavily from my previous work in this area (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996). The literature on political knowledge provides fairly compelling evidence for five characterizations regarding what Americans know: (1) the average American is poorly informed but not uninformed; (2) aggregate levels of political knowledge have remained relatively stable over the past 50 years; (3) Americans appear to be slightly less informed about politics than are citizens of other comparable nations; (4) "average" levels of knowledge mask important differences across groups; and (5) knowledge is tied to many attributes of "good" citizenship. The Average American Is Poorly Informed, but Not Uninformed Over 50 years of survey research on Americans' knowledge of politics leads to several consistent conclusions. The most powerful and influential of these conclusions is that 28 • Communicating the Importance of Civic Engagement the "average" citizen is woefully uninformed about political institutions and processes, substantive policies and socioeconomic conditions, and important political actors such as elected officials and political parties (Bennett, 1988; Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960; Converse, 1964, 1975; Ferejohn, 1990; Neuman, 1986). This conclusion has been reinforced, even mythologized, by popular press accounts of public ignorance, as when a 1986 ABCfWashington Post poll reported that, shortly after the widely covered Geneva summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, a majority ofAmericans could not name the leader of the Soviet Union. A similar, if less scientific, example was given in a 1991 New York Times column entitled "That's US. Senator." The article noted: Several members of the New York State Senate reported last week that they had received dozens of calls from constituents with urgent advice on how they should vote on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. The trouble was, the nomination was in the hands of the United States Senate. (p. A4) Books such as Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987), Diane Ravitch's and Chester Finn's What Do Our I7-Year-Olds Know? (1987), and E. D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy (1988) have also contributed to this negative image of the American public. Indeed, D. Charles Whitney and Ellen Wartella conclude that a "virtual cottage industry has arisen in the past few years in making out the American public as a bunch of ignoramuses" (1989, p. 9). This characterization is so well established that, according to John Ferejohn, "Nothing strikes the student of public opinion and democracy more forcefully than the paucity of information most people possess about politics" (Ferejohn, 1990, p. 3). Evidence from recent presidential campaigns has done little to rehabilitate the American voter's image. For example, a 1992 report by the Center for the Study of Communication at the University of Massachusetts found that while 86% of a random sample of likely voters knew that the Bush's family dog was named Millie and 89% knew that Murphy Brown was the TV character criticized by Dan Quayle, only 15% knew that both candidates favored the death penalty and only 5% knew that both had proposed cuts in the capital gains tax. There is seemingly no end to the examples one can find to illustrate the public's ignorance of politics. The single most commonly known fact about President George Herbert Walker Bush's opinions while he was president was that he hated broccoli. More people were able to identify Judge Wapner (host of the television series The People's Court) than ChiefJustices Burger or Rehnquist. More people know John Lennon than Karl Marx, or know Bill Cosby than either of their U.S. senators. More people know who said "What's Up Doc," "Hi Yo Silver," or "Come Up and See Me Sometime" than "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death," "The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself," or "Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick." More people knew DELLI CARPINI • An Overview ofthe State ofCitizens'Knowledge About Politics • 29 that Pete Rose was accused of gambling than could name any of the five U.S. senators accused of unethical conduct in the savings and loan scandal. This list, of course, could go on. However, while there is no question that levels of public knowledge are less impressive than "an informed observer" might hope, a more systematic overview of the past 50 years of survey research on what Americans know about politics reveals a much more complex picture than normally assumed. In doing research for our book, What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters, Scott Keeter and I collected over 2000 survey questions tapping factual knowledge of politics that were asked over the past 50 years. These questions covered a range of topics one might expect an informed citizen to know, including knowledge of institutions and processes (for example, how a bill becomes a law, or what rights are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution), of substantive issues and indicators of the day (for example, whether there is a federal budget deficit or surplus, or the percentage ofAmericans living in poverty), and ofpublic figures and political organizations (for example, the name of your U.S. representative, the stands of presidential candidates on the key issues of the day, or which party controls the Senate). Unsurprisingly, the average level of knowledge was low-only 4 in 10 of these questions could be answered correctly by over half of those surveyed. But the average alone does not tell the full story. Many ofthe more commonly known facts included rudimentary but potentially important pieces of information such as details about the separation ofpowers across branches and levels ofgovernment; the definitions ofkey terms such as veto, inflation, or party platform; civil rights such as the constitutional guarantee to a trial by jury, free speech, and religious freedom; the stands ofpresidential candidates and political parties on some of the major issues of the day (such as social security, health care, and foreign relations), social and economic conditions (such as the existence of a budget deficit or surplus, or the illiteracy rate), as well as other pieces of information. None of this is to suggest that Americans are generally well informed. Among the 6 in 10 questions that less than half of the public could answer (and the I in 4 that fewer than a quarter of the public could answer) were many facts that seem equally or more crucial to effective citizenship: definitions of key terms such as liberal, conservative, primary elections, or the bill of rights; knowledge of many individual and collective rights guaranteed by the Constitution; the names or issue stands of most public officials below the level of president or governor; candidate and party stands on many important issues of the day; key social conditions such as the unemployment rate or the percentage of the public living in poverty or without health insurance; how much of the federal budget is spent on defense, foreign aid, or social welfare; and so on. Further, there is little evidence that citizens are most knowledgeable about those things that are arguably most important. For example, there is little substantive reason for most Americans to know the name of the vice president, but not the name of their U.S. representative or senator. It does suggest, however, that Americans are neither as uninformed nor as unwill