Pew has a news quiz. You can take it and compare your score to the distribution of scores from a representative sample of Americans. Along with 7% of Americans, I correctly answered 10 of 10 questions, placing me above 93% of Americans. The poll also found that Republicans know more than Independents and Democrats. In April of 2007, Pew did a similar poll and found similar results. A closer look at the data reveal that the difference is mainly at the bottom end of the distribution: there are more less informed Democrats than Republicans, which drags the Democratic average down. 
And men know more than women. 
Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to be represented in the high- knowledge group. But significantly fewer Republicans (26%) than Democrats (31%) fall into the third of the public that knows the least.
Men and Republicans are more Knowledgeable of Current Events than Women and Democrats, Study Finds.
|Among other findings of the study:
People with more education know more than people with less education. (Should we be surprised?)
Older people know more than younger people.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Wouldn't you be more interested in seeing if republican white men and democrat white men differ in knowledge of current events?
Otherwise, this is just another white/minority testing gap. Not very interesting.
The April 2007 poll sorted respondents by race and found that whites score better than blacks.
“Other demographic differences are also striking. Men, on average, knew more than women, all other factors being equal. Older Americans – particularly those 50 years old or older -- did better than younger people. Whites scored better than blacks, while more affluent Americans knew more than those with lower household incomes.”
Unfortunately, the data available at the Pew site is not in a format where white, male Democrats and white, male Republicans can be easily set head-to-head and compared. Likely, most of the difference between Trunks and Donks can be attributed to low scoring blacks.
The finding about men being more knowledgeable than women is interesting because it flies in the face of what people would most commonly expect. You could make money by stopping 100 random people on the street and asking them, “Men? Women? Or Same? Who knows more about current events?” and betting “Same” would be the most common answer.
An other interesting finding from the poll is that blacks know more about current events than Hispanics know. This fits a general pattern of low Hispanic educational achievement, but it’s not what one would expect from an IQ ranking.
Engram, I have a theory that the belief in low hispanic IQ is faulty and partially fueled by racism. I will post about it on my blog, but that's another story.
I'm surprised you would say that one would expect women to know more about politics. Where are the women in your family when the men start arguing/discussing politics? Women don't have much to say. Personally, I don't either. One side of American politics is vehemently opposed to reproductive choice. I am willing to put up with quite a bit of corruption and fancifulness on the other side since they are the side that stands for a freedom I really really want.
Women are on average knowledgeable about a narrow range of political issues which they decide are interesting to them: reproductive choice, policies towards domestic violence perpetrators and child abusers and a few healthcare issues that could potentially affect women or children as a class.
“I'm surprised you would say that one would expect women to know more about politics.”
The contention is not that one would think that women know more, but that people will most likely say women know as much. How do I know this? I don’t. But that would be the way to bet.
Pew has a new poll posted. On every question, men are more likely to know the answer. The gap was narrowest when it came to the question about Hillary’s new job description and which party now controls the House.
I look forward to hearing what you have to say about Hispanic IQ.
Post a Comment