Are American Voters Stupid?

Do voters pick the best or the worst candidates in democratic elections? In order for them to pick the best candidates, they would have to both know the relevant information and be good at making decisions. Otherwise, their choice couldn't be any better than chance. Studies suggest that in America, at least, voters really don't know much about what they are doing.

According to Electoral Vote:

It is not considered politically correct to point out that an awful lot of voters don’t have a clue what they are talking about. A recent poll from Middle Tennessee State University sheds some light on the subject. For example, when asked which candidate wants to roll back the tax cuts for people making over $200,000 a year, a quarter thought it was Bush and a quarter didn’t know. And it goes down hill from there. When asked which candidate supports specific positions on various issues, the results were no better than chance. While this poll was in Tennessee, I strongly suspect a similar poll in other states would get similar results. I find it dismaying that many people will vote for Bush because they want to tax the rich (which he opposes) or vote for Kerry because they want school vouchers for religious schools (which he opposes).

Here's more on the survey:

Tennesseans as a group hardly qualify as well-informed, ideologically consistent policy wonks. For example, only about half of Tennessee adults can accurately name Kerry as the candidate who supports rescinding the recent federal income tax cuts for people earning over $200,000 a year. About a quarter (23%) incorrectly attributed the proposal to Bush, and 27% admit they don’t know which candidate supports the measure. Similarly, only about half (50%) rightly name Bush as the candidate who favors giving parents tax-funded vouchers to help pay private or religious school tuition. Thirteen percent attribute the plan to Kerry, who actually opposes it. Over a third (37%) admit they don’t know.

Knowledge levels are even lower on the other three issues. Well under half (42%) are aware that Bush wants to let younger workers put some of their Social Security withholdings into their own personal retirement accounts. Nineteen percent incorrectly think Kerry supports the measure, and 40% say they don’t know one way or the other. Just over a quarter (28%) rightly name Bush as the candidate who supports giving needy people tax breaks that would help buy health insurance from private companies. Thirty percent inaccurately name Kerry as the measure’s proponent, and 41% admit not knowing. Finally, just 39% know that Kerry advocates requiring plants and factories to add new pollution control equipment when they make upgrades. Fifteen percent wrongly attribute the policy to Bush, and 45% don’t know.

Asked for their own opinions on these same issues – with no clues given in the question regarding which candidates support which position – many Tennesseans express views contrary to those of the candidate they say they support. Only 54% of self-described Kerry partisans, for example, express support for Kerry’s plan to retain the recent income tax cuts only for individuals earning less than $200,000 a year. And about a third (32%) of Bush partisans say they like the idea, even though Bush opposes it. In a mirror image of that pattern, just about half (50%) of those backing Bush support Bush’s plan for providing tax breaks to help needy people buy health insurance from private companies. And about a third (31%) of Kerry backers support the idea, even though Kerry favors an alternative strategy that would let more people qualify for government-funded insurance programs like Medicaid.

Overall, in fact, Tennesseans averaged only two right answers when quizzed about which candidate held which view on the five issues. A fifth (20%) got no right answers, and 19% got one answer right. Another fifth (20%) got two right answers, and still another fifth (20%) got three right answers. Only 13% got four right answers, and a mere 8% got all of the answers right. An analysis looking across the preferences expressed by respondent to these five issues found that only 6% gave unfailingly Democratic answers, and just 2% gave all Republican answers. At least on these issues, most Tennesseans cluster around an ideologically neutral center and, on average, venture no more than a net of two answers in the direction of being either consistently Democratic or consistently Republican.

Tennesseans probably aren't any worse than the average voter — and these are people who express interest in the election! According to the survey, 71% described themselves as “very interested,” 23% as “somewhat interested,” and 6% as “not at all interested.”

Of course this affects whether we can conclude that people are able to pick the "right" candidate. At Crooked Timber Chris explains a mathematical formula that shows:  

...that just in case we expect each voter’s competence slightly to exceed the tossing of a fair coin (say we expect each voter to be right 50.1 per cent of the time), and just in case we can interpret “each voter” to mean “the average voter”, then with an electorate of, say, 100 million, the probability of a majority getting the result right approaches one. Of course, there’s a flip side to this: if the each voter has a < .5 probability of getting the right result, the majority will almost certainly be wrong!

Considering how incompetent the "average voter" appears to be, it certainly sounds like the wise bet is that no matter whom the electorate picks, it's probably the wrong person.

Comforting, isn't it?

Read More:

• 2004 Elections
• Election Polls
• George W. Bush
• John Kerry
• War on Terrorism