Tag: Low-information voters
A Third of Voters Can’t Name Their Party’s Candidates
One-Third
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that 34% of registered Republican voters and 32.5% of registered Democratic voters were unable to name their party’s congressional candidate less than five weeks before the midterm election.
One-Third Don’t Realize ACA and Obamacare Are the Same
35%
Of Americans said either that they thought Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act were two different policies (17%) or didn’t know if they were the same or different (18%), according to a new Morning Consult survey. “This confusion was more pronounced among people 18 to 29 and those who earn less than $50,000 — two groups that could be significantly affected by repeal.”
Trump Voters Got Most of Their Pre-Election News from Fox News
40%
Of Trump voters got most of their pre-election information from Fox news, a new Pew Research survey finds. Hillary Clinton voters named an array of different sources, with no one source named by more than one-in-five of her supporters.
Trump Voters Can’t Tell Truth from Fiction
67%
Of Trump voters say that unemployment increased during the Obama administration, to only 20% who say it decreased, according to a Public Polling survey. Only 41% of Trump voters say that the stock market went up during the Obama administration. 39% say it went down, and another 19% say they’re not sure.
We Live in an Information Age with No Reliable Information
Weaponized misinformation is hardly a new phenomenon. Its effect on the 2016 presidential race has, however, been exceptionally ominous. A campaign of deliberate deceptions involving but not limited to foreign entities seeking to disrupt the American political process to their own ends should be ringing alarm bells for patriotic American voters. … But there’s no one left to ring them; the stewards of objective discourse have been discredited in the minds of those this campaign has targeted. The age in which there was universally understood and incontrovertible truth is over. The information age has given way to something more closely resembling its antonym.
— Noah Rothman
Which Candidate Matches You on the Issues?
You can take a quiz to find out which presidential candidate (if any) most closely matches up with your core values. Then you’ll know how to vote!
Almost 25 million of your fellow Americans have employed the quiz to tell them whom to support in the coming election based on their values and stances on a variety of issues. So don’t be a low-information voter anymore, let the Interwebs tell you who you should vote for!
Suggestion: When taking the survey, check the “other stances” selection to give a more nuanced response and don’t forget to click on the slider that indicates how important each issue is to you.
Full disclosure: I sided 92% of the time with Bernie Sanders, 88% with Hillary Clinton and 72% with Martin O’Malley — not surprising. More disturbing, however, were my match-ups with Republicans: 21% with Donald Trump, 20% with Ben Carson and 19% with Ted Cruz.
Obviously, I’ve got some naval-staring to do …
Americans Are Turned Off by and Tuned Out of Midterms
People feel they’re victims of the process, that politics isn’t something to participate in, it’s something that is done to them. The feeling is getting worse, it’s getting much deeper, it’s covering larger and larger groups within the electorate …. Their frustration is much worse than anything I’ve heard before.
— Democratic Party pollster Geoff Garin, quoted in Politico.
Even (Neo) Conservatives are Tired of Low-Information Republicans
Conservative columnist and neocon Bush II speechwriter David Frum wrote recently that he is tired of being surrounded by dumb people. At least, that was basically the point of his article, “When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?” in the November New York magazine.
On a recent CNN appearance, Frum tried to expand on the harmful affect of FOX News on American discourse although CNN’s Howard Kurtz seemed determine to err on the side of championing FOX.
Note: We wrote last year about the example Frum cites, a story that first surfaced broadly on the Drudge Report web site and was then taken up with fervor by FOX.
