Many polls show that large majorities of the public want to raise tax rates on people earning over $250,000 per year. But in an interesting recent post on the Democrats’ approach to tax policy, Megan McArdle cites an interesting 2012 poll of likely voters conducted for The Hill, which shows that the vast majority of […]
Archive | Political Ignorance
Is it Unjust to Require Children to Pass a Knowledge Test to Vote, but Not Adults?
By Ilya Somin on November 8, 2012 12:27 am in Election Law, Elections, Political Ignorance, Voting Rights for Children
Canadian legal blogger Leonid Sirota has posted an interesting response to my post advocating extension of the franchise to politically knowledgeable children. He argues that it is unjust to require children to pass a knowledge test for voting, but not adults. He would therefore prefer to lower the voting age to 16 instead: Pour ma […]
Explaining Obama’s Victory
Beginning today, pundits are going to offer a wide range of explanations for Obama’s victory. But I think the simplest and most obvious is that he won because the economy had improved just enough since 2008 to give him the edge. As I pointed out back in September, standard models of presidential election outcomes based […]
Education and Voting Rights for Knowledgeable Children
By Ilya Somin on November 7, 2012 1:03 pm in Democracy, Education, Political Ignorance, Voting Rights for Children
In response to my post arguing that we should grant voting rights to politically knowledgeable children, Paul Horwitz of Prawfsblawg makes the following suggestion: What spurred this post is Ilya Somin’s argument on the VC yesterday that knowledgeable children ought to be allowed to vote. He addresses some standard objections in his post, but a […]
Suffer the Little Children to Vote
By Ilya Somin on November 6, 2012 11:05 am in Democracy, Election Law, Political Ignorance, Voting Rights for Children
On this election day, as on most others, we will hear a lot about the need to increase turnout and the dangers of voter suppression. But few will even consider questioning the systematic exclusion of a huge part of our population from the franchise: children under the age of 18. We allow even the most […]
The Case for Abstaining from Ignorant Voting
Today, Americans will have an opportunity to vote on a wide range of candidates and ballot initiatives. In many cases, however, we will be voting on candidates and issues that we know very little about. It is rational for most voters to be ignorant about most issues, because the chance of casting a decisive ballot […]
Protectionism and Beneficial Political Ignorance
As longtime VC readers know, one of my pet peeves is denouncing the harmful effects of widespread political ignorance and irrationality. As a general rule, the things voters don’t know often hurt them. On rare occasions, however, political ignorance can actually be beneficial. The issue of free trade and protectionism is one such example. In […]
Overconfident Pundits Predicting Victory for Their Side
Given the extreme closeness of both the national and battleground state polls, one would think that serious political commentators would avoid making bold predictions about the outcome of the presidential race. After all, an overconfident pundit who turns out to be wrong will have egg on their face in just a few days. This is […]
Foot Voting, Federalism, and Political Freedom
By Ilya Somin on October 15, 2012 11:30 am in Democracy, Federalism, Political Ignorance, Voting With Your Feet
My forthcoming article, “Foot Voting, Federalism, and Political Freedom,” is now available on SSRN. The article is part of a symposium on Federalism and Subsidiarity in the interdisciplinary journal Nomos, which focuses on a different broad issue in political theory every year. Other contributors include a variety of big-name federalism scholars in legal academia and […]
Do Surveys Overestimate Political Ignorance?
In a recent Language Log post, Mark Liberman argues that surveys overestimate the extent of political ignorance. Unfortunately, his evidence is far from compelling. He notes a few examples where scholars or reporters simply misstated the results of a particular survey. That surely happens. But it doesn’t account for more than a small fraction of […]
Dogs that Didn’t Bark in Tonight’s Presidential Debate
By Ilya Somin on October 3, 2012 11:22 pm in Elections, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Obama, Political Ignorance
In addition to Willow, there were two major dogs that didn’t bark during tonight’s presidential debate. First, even though the debate was supposed to focus on domestic policy, neither the moderator nor the candidates ever focused on some of the most important domestic issues on which the president can have a big impact: issues such […]
Why We Choose Presidents Based on the Wrong Issues
By Ilya Somin on October 1, 2012 9:38 pm in Democracy, Political Ignorance, Presidency, Public Opinion
In a recent Slate column, John Dickerson points out that presidential elections typically focus too much on issues the president has little control over and too little on those that he has more effect on: Nothing tests a president’s temperament like foreign affairs. Though this presidential campaign has only recently touched on the topic, the […]
Thoughts on Romney’s Remarks on “the 47 Percent” Who Will Vote for Obama “No Matter What”
Much cyber-ink has already been spilled over Mitt Romney’s May fundraiser statement dismissing the “47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what” because they don’t pay income taxes and depend on government benefits. In my view, Romney’s statement reflects a crude and and largely inaccurate view of voter motivation. […]
Upcoming Talk on Democracy and Political Ignorance
This Thursday, I will be giving a talk on my book Democracy and Political Ignorance (under contract with the Stanford University Press), at the George Mason Economics Department Workshop on Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. The talk will run from 2 to 3:30 PM, in Enterprise Hall 318, at George Mason’s campus in Fairfax. I covered […]
Why It’s Likely to be a Close Election Decided by Ignorant Swing Voters
In this recent column, political analyst Sean Trende explains why the current state of the economy is likely to lead to a very close election in November. Various pundits have suggested that Romney should be doing much better in the polls, given the weak economy. Romney is indeed a far from inspiring candidate. But, as […]