I was reading Steve S's diary about polls today, and somebody mentioned waiting for a Pew poll. So that got me a bit curious and I went to their website to see if there were any clues about when they might have a presidential poll out. Didn't see anything, but I did see a link to taking a political quiz to test your knowledge against 1000 "random adults."
So I did. Here is the link Pew Political Knowledge Quiz
Come below for some quick thoughts....
First, since all the questions were essentially binary (ans. either Republican or Democrat), there were either a fair number of willfully ignorant folks, or some portion of the 1000 folks were just f'ing with the quiz. The odds of getting all 13 questions wrong is someplace south of .01%, but 4% of the 1000 folks managed to do just that.
Second, so even assuming that some portion of the 1000 folks was just jerking around with the poll, still only about 50% of the folks taking the poll knew half the correct answers.
Third, what was interesting was that the youngest cohort had a pretty good grasp on who supported gay and lesbian rights, and who supported a path to legal immigration status. That felt good. But less than half (if I recall the numbers correctly) knew that FDR was a
Democrat and Lincoln was a Republican. That is an indictment of our educational system.
Finally, just an assumption on my part (maybe Pollyanna-ish), but I would think that as you increase knowledge about who supports what, you'd probably increase D support.
So - take the poll and let us know how you did.... (PS ... I am afraid that you will be really stunned at the simplicity of the questions, and like me, wonder how somebody could miss many, if any at all).