For starters, take the twelve question current events poll from Pew research just like 1000 randomly selected adults did a few weeks ago.
How’d you do?
Here are some highlights showing how the American electorate did:
- Of the 12 multiple-choice questions, Americans answered an average of 5.3 questions correctly.
- Just 32% know that the Senate passed its version of the legislation without a single Republican vote. And only 26% know that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate and force a vote on a bill.
- 48% of Republicans are able to identify Reid as Senate majority leader compared with just 33% of Democrats. More Republicans can identify Reid as majority leader than can identify Steele as chairman of the RNC (37%).
- 41% correctly say that Stephen Colbert is a comedian and television talk show host. This is the only question on the quiz that more people younger than age 30 than older people answer correctly (49% vs. 39%).
- Less than a third of Republicans or Democrats can correctly identify the number of votes needed to end a filibuster (30% among Republicans, 25% among Democrats). Fewer than half of college graduates (45%) know that it takes 60 Senate votes to overcome a filibuster.
- Republicans, on average, answered one more question correctly than Democrats (5.9 vs. 4.9 correct).
- Men on average answer more questions correctly than women (6.0 for men vs. 4.6 for women). The gender gap in news knowledge is greatest on the question of which country holds the most U.S. government debt (70% of men answer correctly vs. 49% of women) and the current level of the Dow (45% of men know this vs. 27% of women). But there is no gender divide on the item about the number of women on the Supreme Court. Roughly equal proportions of men (57%) and women (56%) answer this correctly.
- In the current News IQ Quiz, just 2% of the public answered all questions correctly (12 out of 12), while 6% failed to answer a single question right.
- Compared with the News Quiz from nearly a year ago, it proved harder for the public to answer at least half the questions correctly this time. Only 42% of Americans answered at least six questions right, compared with 71% who answered at least half the questions correctly in March 2009.
Here are the complete results.
Yes. Each of their votes counts just as much as yours.
And in the words of the Dixie Chicks: “There’s Your Trouble”.
Posted on January 29th, 2010 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Rants and Musings
Very pleased with my score; very sad (but not surprised) at the research results. I’m listening to Obama’s “conversation” with the House Republicans…a few Representatives are too busy thumbing the Transmit button to call it a real conversation. Doesn’t sound much like he’s wooing them today. Thanks for the article and the music…love those Chicks and proud to be an “elitist.”
I was very disappointed in myself that I missed one!
I was disappointed in myself because I missed the question regarding the Dow Jones Industrial Average. My ego can’t stand anything less than 100%.
However, the ignorance of my fellow Americans is truly frightening, although not surprising. I’ve been addicted to reading comments posted after blog entries, news stories and on message boards to be surprised that the majority of my countrymen and women are functionally ignorant. That’s definitely the problem. The really sad thing is that as quizzes go, this one wasn’t very hard and for heaven’s sake, it was multiple choice! I admit that I missed the Dow Jones question because I haven’t been paying attention to Wall Street here of late. The question was more than fair and pretty basic.