Who knows more? Democrats or Republicans?

By now, you've probably seen the Program on International Policy Attitudes study that found that Kerry supporters know their candidate's positions a whole lot better than their Bush counterparts. For example: just 20% of Bush supporters know that George Bush opposes U.S. participation in a land mine treaty. 79% of John Kerry's supporters know that Kerry supports such participation (for a further outline of the differences, see this Kevin Drum post).

There's no way around it. That's a startling difference.

It's not much of a surprise that some have tried to spin these numbers, arguing that Democrats are just as likely to have factual misconceptions as Republicans. Now, that might be true. But none of these claims seem to be backed up by facts or solid argumentation. Here are three examples:

Kaimi Wenger of Tutissima Cassis argues that the survey's biased against Republicans. Ask Democrats questions like ""Is it true that filibustered Republican judicial nominees Miguel Estrada and Priscilla Owen received a rating of "not qualified" from the American Bar Association?" and you're likely to find out that lots more Democrats than Republicans will get that wrong, not necessarily because Democrats are less well-informed than Republicans, but simply because they're likely to believe what they want to believe.

David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy takes a similar tack, pointing to two factors to explain away Republicans' apparent ignorance: (1) "Bush supporters are inclined to think well of Bush" [...] 2) "Most people have no idea what global climate treaties, land mine treaties, the International Criminal Court, etc., involve. But they all sound good to an ignorant voter." In other words, voters don't know about these issues, so you really can't blame them for not knowing their favored candidate's position on them.

Then there's Eugene Volokh, who comes up with another example meant to show the bias in the survey. He guesses:

that more Democrats than Republicans erroneously think that by not renewing the assault weapons ban, Congress (1) legalized automatic weapons -- it didn't, since the ban was only on semiautomatics, guns which are not materially different from guns that have been legal throughout this time -- or that (2) assault weapons play a role in the majority or even a large minority of crimes (the actual number seems to be around 4% or less).

As far as I'm concerned, there's a whole lot of red herrings floating about in this sea of spin.

Let's take on Wenger first. Democrats, he suggests, believe "that filibustered Republican judicial nominees Miguel Estrada and Priscilla Owen received a rating of 'not qualified' from the American Bar Association." Now, this could very well be true. But it's not at all relevant. Does Wenger really believe that ignorance regarding the ABA's rating of judicial nominees is on the same level as not knowing what your favored presidential candidate thinks about a little issue like, say, trade? These bits of knowledge are on entirely different scales. What effect can knowing the ABA's take on Estrada have on a typical voter? Not much that I can think of. The policies of a presidential candidate, though? That's an entirely different story. That's the kind of thing that should, in a well-informed world, influence people's votes.

Volokh has the same problem. How significant is it that Democrats know less about the recently lapsed assault weapons ban than Republicans? Well, you could argue that it's fairly significant, but do you really believe that it's more important than knowing a presidential candidate's stance towards multilateralism? These facts are on such completely different levels that it's disingenuous to equate them.

Bernstein's take basically comes down to viewing the results "not a reflection of greater ignorance on the part of Bush supporters, just worse guessing." In other words, yes, Bush supporters are ignorant of certain topics. But so, Bernstein argues, are Kerry supporters. It's just that Kerry supports those positions that superficially appear "good," so that anyone who doesn't know better ends up agreeing with Kerry. Now, this could be true. But it seems equally plausible that people who plan to vote for Bush do support the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, the Kyoto treaty, and all the rest. In that case, they're simply backing the wrong horse, the one whose nose is pointed in a direction they don't want to go.

Beyond all this, there's the teensy little problem that Bernstein, Volokh, and Wenger have absolutely no evidence that Democrats and Kerry supporters would perform as poorly as Republicans and Bush supporters in a survey biased "against" Kerry. It's fine to argue speculatively in this vein, but without evidence of some sort, your conclusions are just that: speculations. Meanwhile, it's awfully hard to argue with the fact that Bush supporters simply do not know his positions on many issues.

In short, Bernstein, Volokh, and Wenger are spinning the data, trying, in the words of Wenger, to make ignorance bipartisan. In doing so, they've treated all facts as equally significant and teased out speculative arguments based on little to no evidence. It's irresponsible, and it ignores what appears to be a real problem in American politics: a large percentage of voters simply aren't well-informed. At the moment, that voting bloc appears to be overwhelmingly Republican. I don't think this fact reflects Democrats' higher intelligence or anything like that. Truth be told, I don't have much of an explanation. But just because I can't explain doesn't mean it's not real. Look at the numbers.