We are all low-information voters as to certain areas of policy. The guy who doesn’t know shit about trade policy might know quite a lot about Afghanistan, having served there. The guy who can’t tell a COLA from a Cola might know quite a lot about eminent domain.
Putting that aside, I would consider you a low-information voter if you don’t know these 10 (more or less random) basic facts:
[ol]
[li]By modern custom, most legislation cannot pass the Senate without 60 votes[/li][li]Republicans control the House and Senate[/li][li]Defense, social security, and medical spending make up the supermajority of the federal budget[/li][li]The federal government accounts for a minority of overall education spending[/li][li]There are two major sects of Islam [/li][li]Crime is down from 1992 levels, but incarceration rates remain among the highest in the world[/li][li]Most people who want to legally immigrate to the US cannot do so without waiting decades (at best)[/li][li]Both unemployment and wage growth are currently low by historical standards[/li][li]The US spends a lot more than similar countries on healthcare, with worse results in many measures of health[/li][li]Presidents appoint Supreme Court justices with advice and consent of the Senate, and there is currently one opening[/li][/ol]
We could easily add dozens more facts that we could probably agree are basic and important–without knowledge of which a voter really isn’t rationally evaluating the views of competing candidates. But let’s take these. What percentage of voters do you think know all 10? I’d say it’s probably in the single digits.
I don’t think that’s the correct way to look at it.
IMO, a person would be a “low-information voter” if he was seriously misinformed about an issue that he cared enough to base his vote on it.
You can’t just pick 10 random things that you think are important and declare other people to be low information because they don’t know them.
The thing about Trump is that the key parts of his appeal is things that are completely unrealistic to people who are not low-information voters. But his supporters are voting for him because of the very things that they’re ignorant about.
Which is not to say that Trump has anything like a monopoly on LIV. But they do seem to form a bigger part of his core support than that of other candidates.
If I vote for Trump because of his policies on eminent domain, which I know a lot about, and despite his policies on exterminating the families of terrorists, with which I am unfamiliar, then I am the epitome of a low-information voter.
There are certain areas of knowledge that are essential to being an informed voter, and they are not limited merely to areas determinative of one’s vote.
Maybe I don’t understand what you mean, because on the surface this statement seems very hard to defend.
Do you mean that a person who votes purely based on the hair color of a candidate and ignores all other issues is as rational as someone who votes based on tax policy?
I would call his initial decision that hair color is the prime qualification for a candidate a very stupid one, but from that premise his subsequent decision that all he needs to find out about a candidate is his hair color is rational, and he would not qualify as a low information voter for my purposes.
And that’s an extreme case. Suppose a guy thinks immigration is not a big deal either way and for that reason doesn’t bother educating himself about it to the point of knowing Item #7 on your list, and - for that same reason - when voting for a candidate he does not consider that candidate’s views on immigration. I would not consider that person a LIV. OK, technically the guy might have low information, but that’s not the same thing we’re discussing in the case of Trump supporters.
Disinterest in Trump’s policy positions as to many important issues is exactly what was being discussed. And that does not fit your model of low-information voting at all, since in your model being ignorant about objectively important areas of policy does not make you low-information.
Right. But the reason many of Trump’s supporters are LIV is because they’re ignorant about the issues which form the basis of their support for Trump.
E.g. if you think there is any chance that Trump is actually going solve the immigration issue by building a wall and getting Mexico to pay for it, then you are ignorant about that issue. And if that type of support is what attracts a lot of people to Trump, then he is getting support from LIV.
Well, I don’t know about that. Some facts and issues are objectively more important than others, in terms of relevance to government business. A voter whose choice of issues to care about elevates the unimportant over the important is a low-information voter for that reason even if his understanding of those issues is in no way misinformed.
I too disagree. Voters can prioritise policies. For instance they may prioritise eminent domain as most important and terrorism as least important. Or simply not care. Or, more nuanced, decide to respect the decision whatever that might be.
Voters need a certain baseline level of information to be able to meaningfully prioritize policies. If they lack that information, they are low-information voters.
In most cases, it wouldn’t make a difference if they had it, because most political affiliation is not arrived at via dispassionate weighing of evidence; it’s basically tribalism and rationalization. People adopt views that align them with others whom they feel are like themselves or reflect how they themselves want to be perceived, and work out the rationale after the fact, if they bother at all. Studies have shown again and again how feeble mere evidence is in changing long-standing political opinions. None of us know as much as we should, and everyone relies on heuristics and cognitive shortcuts.
I don’t think quantity of information is the relevant issue. What we call low-information voters should probably be called something like affinity voters. It’s not that they’re suffering from a lack of information; it’s that most of the information out there is irrelevant to their motivation for participating in the process.
Granted, sometimes the more complex explanation is nearer the truth than the simpler, and sometimes what can adequately be explained by stupidity is really attributable to malice. But such cases are unusual, and the razors are still very, very good rules of thumb.
Many or most economists agree that a major clampdown on illegal immigrants would be economically detrimental to a large majority of legal Americans.
So it could be argued that a typical voter who supports a candidate because of his anti-immigrant views is a low information voter IF he supports anti-immigration policies because he thinks they’re good for him economically.
Of course if he supports the anti-immigration policy for racist reasons he might not be low-information.
I guess he means that that voter is “high information” if he’s factually correct about the candidate’s hair color, but not if he overlooked a dye job? And if the opinion that orange hair was a good trait was based on a discredited low-information website … well, I don’t know. I guess you’ll have to ask Mr. Fotheringay-Phipps.
I find this whole subdiscussion diversive but amusing. For the record I agree here with Messrs. Parker and Taunt.
Well if the standard is to only pay attention from 60 days out maybe.
But given two fairly well known candidates head to heads now, at least national ones, are more predictive than ones 100 days out, at least according to Wang’s analysis.
Polls now, both national and state ones, are not things written in stone but they still, in aggregate, inform.
See for example Wang’s most recent post. The point there is not the electoral map he produces but that plotting of current state polls against 2012 election results. As a complete body the state polls demonstrate that in general, at this point in time, there is an overall shift to Clinton over Trump by 3 points more than Obama over Romney … which happens to be pretty dang consistent with the fact that Obama beat Romney by 4% (not sure where Wang gets 7% from) and Clinton is currently up by 6.4% in the RCP general election head to heads. The only state that seems significantly “scrambled” by Trump so far is Utah, which at this point is slightly leaning Clinton. Otherwise it looks, so far, like a pretty even modest shift Democratward across the board.
This one new Qunnipiac set of polls should neither be ignored nor overweighted; it should be thrown into that complete body of constantly updating data. Doing that it moves the comple bar only a little. RCP rolling average still results in FL and OH both Clinton +4, and PA Clinton +7. Huh, that’s Florida’s Obama v Romney result of Obama +1 plus that 3. Spooky! Not too far off from the Ohio 2012 result of Obama +3 add 3 to calling currently Clinton up by 6. Only off by 1! And given that it was Obama by 5 in PA that adding 3 more to get to 8 also compares pretty impressively! Also only off by 1.
Bottomline that would result in being enough to have the Obama states plus NC, EV 347 to 191, and possibly UT on a crazy one-time Trump specific basis, EV 353 to 185. Also what I get moving the dials on the 538 app slightly up non-college educated Whites, down college educated Whites, and up Hispanics all enough to end up at Clinton +7 with the +/- of an odd Utah flip.
The fact that the national poll results and the state poll results in aggregate are agreeing with an overall shift of the 2012 election by 3 more to the Democratic candidate gives one very high confidence that current reality is indeed Clinton +6 to 7, about 3 better than Obama v Romney. These aggregate data results much more than Quinnipiac’s possible motivations or possible poor reliability are what lead us to discount their call of near ties in FL and OH and a Trump lead in PA. Outlier results belong in the analysis but aggregating data places them in context.
Now will polling stay like this? Will summertime noise swamp real signals with no good data coming out again until September? Will the pollsters get good reads on who will actually turnout? Given the ahistoric nature of trump as a candidate will there be atypical magnitudes of shift between now and election day? Will Trump end up scrambling state results more with the naked appeal to White male resentment of all minorities and women?
I dunno but that does not mean that knowing where things stand now is not worth paying attention to. It allows fair statements like this to made by Wang:
So decide if you think that SD should be the 7 points based on the last 12 presidential elections or the 4 points of the 4 elections and you can base your probability assessments accordingly.
And therein lies the rub. I’m sure that there are actually people who believe that it is their duty as citizens to be honest and forthright with pollsters. Others are trolls. As message boards are the only places I DON’T troll, you can guess where I stand.
Okay, not necessarily. My inner Boy Scout would probably come out if anyone asked me, but I can dream of playing a good ol’ boy Trump–or Bernie–supporter, can’t I? :o
And if the opinion that orange hair was a good trait was based on a discredited low-information website … well, I don’t know. I guess you’ll have to ask Mr. Fotheringay-Phipps.