One of my favorite polls was the PIPA poll concluding that Bush supporters were, ahem,
resistant to information: they had all sorts of incorrect views about Bush's beliefs. But this afternoon I was reading
Chomsky's article on the 2004 elections--worth reading, by the way, though if you know Chomsky at all you won't be surprised by what he says--when I came across this tidbit:
The most careful studies (PIPA) found that voters had little idea of the stand of the candidates on matters that concerned them. Bush voters tended to believe that he shared their beliefs, even though the Republican Party rejected them, often explicitly. Investigating the sources used in the studies, we find that the same was largely true of Kerry voters, unless we give highly sympathetic interpretations to vague statements that most voters had probably never heard.
What was that again? Kerry voters had a similar misrepresentation of candidates' beliefs? But I thought PIPA had concluded that Bush voters were "resistant to information" and that Kerry voters weren't; how could this be? Say it ain't so, Noam!
More below the fold ....
Well, I thought, maybe Chomsky's just wrong. To find out, I went to
PIPA's website and took a look at
the poll results and
PIPA's analysis. Roughly, what I found was that while Kerry supporters seemed to be on the whole slightly better informed than Bush supporters, significant proportions of Kerry supporters also had highly distorted views on the candidates' positions. Below are three examples.
1. Bush/Kerry positions on Kyoto agreement
34% of Kerry supporters believed that Bush supported the Kyoto agreement to combat global warming. (This is slightly more than the 31% of Kerry supporters who think the US is party to the agreement.) Only a little more than half of Kerry supporters (54%) believed, correctly, that Bush opposed it. Also, while 74% of Kerry supporters believed that Kerry supports the Kyoto agreement, it should also be noted that that figure is probably quite close to the proportion of Kerry supporters who favor the Kyoto agreement. (Many polls put national support for the agreement at between 60% and 70%.)
2. Bush/Kerry positions on nuclear test ban treaty
50% of Kerry voters believed, incorrectly, that Bush favors participating in a global nuclear test ban; 77% believed that Kerry favors participating. Again, note that support for such a treaty is supported by huge majorities of the US population, according to PIPA.
3. Bush/Kerry positions on trade agreements
A majority of Kerry supporters believed, incorrectly, that Bush favors making minimal working-condition and environmental standards conditions on international trade agreements. While 90% correctly believed Kerry favors these conditions, once again, support for such conditions by the US population is overwhelming.
Given the large proportions of Kerry supporters who held incorrect beliefs about Bush's positions on these (and other) issues, and given that they in fact share many positions with Kerry, it seems likely that their own beliefs about what the US should do strongly influenced their beliefs about what the candidates believed the US should do.
What does this mean?
I think it means that the PIPA analysis was significantly misleading. Yes, it's alarming, in a way, that so many Bush supporters held incorrect beliefs about Bush's own positions; but that can probably be explained by the natural human tendency to attribute to the people you like the general worldview you hold. It's arguable that both Bush and Kerry supporters strongly displayed this tendency.
But I'd say a more important conclusion to draw is that, as a nation, we are dangerously underinformed (and misinformed). (Present company excepted, of course.) Kerry supporters and Bush supporters, by and large, get their news from similar places. (Although there does seem to be a stronger preference for Fox News among Bush supporters, they also watch CNN, CBS/ABC/NBC, and the rest.) Political campaigns, with their relentless bombardment of misinformation and PR crap upon the public, make the situation significantly worse during election years. It's little wonder that the state of our democracy is so perilous, given that the people whose job it is to tell us about the world do it so very badly.
I've long worried about how the current ways in which information gets around in this country make democratic change much harder, and there are no easy solutions. (On my optimistic days, I think there is a solution.) One of my hopes is that community blogs like DailyKos can be a helpful counterforce to the great torrent of infotainment sludge that spews from the major media outlets. At first I thought, given the PIPA poll, that the work of lessening the ratio of crap to information had to be directed mainly towards Republicans; but reviewing the poll results suggests that this work needs a much wider target.
Oh, well. I hope this doesn't depress you as much as it depressed me.