Sam Bowman of the Adam Smith Institute has an interesting post analyzing recent survey data on widespread political ignorance in Britain [HT: Nigel Ashford]: The public is ignorant about politics and lacks even the basic facts that it would need to make sound judgments about political issues. A new poll by Ipsos-MORI shows just how […]
Archive | Public Opinion
Video of the Huffington Post Live Discussion on Democracy and Constitutionalism in Egypt
A video of the Huffington Post Live panel discussion on constitutionalism, democracy, and the situation in Egypt is now available here. I was one of four participants. The others were Prof. Stanley Katz of Princeton, Zaid Al-Ali – an expert on constitutional design in the Arab world, and Daniel Landsberg-Rodriguez. I tried to emphasize two […]
More on Egypt, Constitutionalism, and Democracy
At the Liberty and Law blog, Michael Rappaport has posted a thoughtful response to my recent post arguing that liberal democrats are sometimes justified in supporting restrictions on democracy in cases where the majority public opinion is highly illiberal. I cited survey data and other evidence suggesting that Egypt is probably such a case. Michael […]
Restricting Democracy in Order to Protect Other Liberal Values
Some argue that it would be hypocritical for the United States or other Western nations to support the recent military coup against radical Islamist Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. After all, we supposedly champion democracy, and Morsi was democratically elected. Whether the US should endorse the post-coup government, oppose it, or take a wait-and-see attitude is […]
Updated Reflections on the Revolution in Egypt
When the Egypt’s Mubarak dictatorship began to collapse two years ago, I wrote a post entitled “Reflections on the Potential Revolution in Egypt,” shamelessly copying Edmund Burke. I suggested that the rebellion could easily end up establishing a regime even worse than Mubarak’s was. Unfortunately, the new radical Islamist government of Mohammed Morsi did indeed […]
Political Ignorance and Partisan Bias Go Down When Survey Respondents Are Rewarded for Correct Answers
By Ilya Somin on June 5, 2013 6:24 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion, Voting With Your Feet
Many studies show that there is widespread political ignorance, with large percentages of the public ignorant of fairly basic facts. In addition, voters’ perception of the facts is often heavily influenced by partisan bias. For example, Republicans overestimate the rates of inflation and unemployment when there is a Democratic president, while Democrats have the opposite […]
Judging People by their Unpopular Views
Last week, economist Bryan Caplan wrote an interesting post explaining why people’s virtue or lack thereof is often most evident in their unpopular views: Consider a world where 80% of people are Conformists, 10% of people are Righteous, and 10% are Reprobates. The Conformists are epistemically and morally neutral, so they believe and support whatever […]
Upcoming George Mason University Panel on the Tea Party and Voter Rationality
On Monday April 1, I will be speaking at a George Mason University School of Law panel on the Tea Party movement and voter rationality. Lots of data show that voters are often ignorant about politics and highly biased in their evaluation of the information they do know. The panel will focus on the extent […]
Americans’ (Relative) Sympathy for Israel at a 22-Year High
Times of Israel: Americans’ sympathy for Israel is at a 22-year high, according to Gallup figures released on Friday, just five days ahead of Barack Obama’s first visit to Israel as president. In figures gleaned from the polling organization’s early February World Affairs poll, 64 percent of Americans say their sympathies “in the Middle East […]
Science, Political Ignorance, and Deference to “Authoritative” Experts
By Ilya Somin on March 6, 2013 7:39 pm in Junk Science and Quackspertise, Political Ignorance, Politicizing Science, Public Opinion
Economist David Friedman has an insightful post on the problems inherent in deferring to the views of “authoritative” scientific bodies: A pattern I have observed in a variety of public controversies is the attempt to establish some sort of official scientific truth, as proclaimed by a suitable authority—a committee of the National Academy of Science, […]
Public Opinion and the California Gay Marriage Case
In a recent post, co-blogger Orin Kerr cites a poll showing that 61% of Californians now support gay marriage, and considers the implications of this result for the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on the constitutionality of California’s ban on gay marriage. He predicts that: If last year’s debate over the popularity of the Affordable Care […]
What to Do When Illiberal, Anti-Democratic Forces Take Power Through the Democratic Process
When Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship began to collapse two years ago, I expressed the fear that the ultimate outcome might be a new Egyptian government more oppressive than the old. The main reasons for my concern were that illiberal radical Islamists were far better positioned to seize power than liberal democrats, and that Egyptian public opinion […]
Charles Rangel’s Case for Conscription
If the Pentagon’s recent decision to open up combat positions to women leads conservative Dave Carter to worry that women will be drafted, liberal Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel embraces the idea and calls for the establishment of a draft that applies to both men and women: Since January 2003, at the height of the debate […]
High School Students for Liberty
In her interesting new study of young libertarians, which I discussed in my last post, Liana Gamber Thompson notes “a significant deficit” in the libertarian movement – the lack of an organization for high school students interested in libertarian ideas: Of the five participants [in her study] under age 18, four reported participating in the […]
The Politics of Young Libertarians
Liana Gamber Thompson of the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism has an interesting new paper on the politics of young libertarians, focusing especially on members of Students for Liberty, the rapidly growing student libertarian organization. Here is the summary: In the past decade, young libertarians in the U.S., or members of the Liberty […]