The Politics of Ignorance

"Ignorance is Strength." - Big Brother, 1984

I was taking to someone yesterday who is a reasonably bright educated person. I was asking them about what they thought about Freddie Cohen, about the latest planning applications he had approved (Portelet, Swansons, Creepy Valley), and about the Hopkins Masterplan for the Waterfront and the sunken road.

She hadn't been following it at all. She gets the JEP, but had taken no notice - even though she lives in St Brelade, where at least 2 of the planning decisions relate to. She told me that she had no idea, she didn;t really read any of "that stuff".

[She had however heard of the celebrated Newsnight and thought Frank Walker had made a fool of himself.]

What worries me is that I suspect she may be fairly common among potential voters, people who take no interest, and then go on to accept the candidate's own promotion of themselves at election time at its face value, based on that, and a complete ignorance of all the murky areas where there have been articles, letters, comments that are critical.

http://www.salon.com/books/it/1999/11/22/voter/

A Salon article on voter ignorance in the USA notes that:

one of the most consistent findings of public-opinion research is that the majority of Americans have long found politics about as exciting as a PBS documentary on the great crested grebe -- and they pay a corresponding amount of attention to it. Consider the following, drawn from an almost endless number of examples that political scientists have turned up over the years: One month after the Republican revolution in 1994, in which conservatives, led by Newt Gingrich, finally took control of the House of Representatives, 57 percent of the electorate did not know who Gingrich was. Despite massive coverage in every newspaper in the country, and on every news program, the vast majority had never heard of the Contract with America. On a typical election day, 56 percent of Americans can't name a single candidate in their own district, for any office....It's not just the people who don't vote who are uninformed, either -- not that that would exactly be reassuring. Only a tiny sliver of active voters show even passing familiarity with the kinds of policy debates that elites take for granted.

and in Australia

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3822

Ian McAllister undertook a study in 2001 leading him to suppose that, "by any standards, levels of political knowledge in the electorate are low." Based on analysis of a survey of voters in the 1997 Australian federal election he found that the median voter could only answer correctly two out of seven factual statements about political institutions. But not all of McAllister's observations were that damning. He also asked respondents if they knew the name of their federal member prior to the election. Seventy per cent correctly gave the name of the member and 61 per cent the correct name of the party. This is an interesting finding, because it appears not to be consistent with the experiences in the US. Figure 4 shows only 44 per cent of Americans could name an election candidate. This is not exactly the same question, but close enough to indicate that Australians are more knowledgeable about who their candidates and parliamentarians are.

The picture emerges, perhaps, of the Australian voter who is not as politically ignorant as his or her counterparts in some western democracies, particularly in countries like the US where the turnout rates are low. But attempting to put a "level" on the extent of ignorance or knowledge is a hard task.

Rabinowitz and MacDonald (1989) are among those who question whether voters weigh up issue alternatives in an empirical way, in the sense that they choose between policy tradeoffs. Rabinowitz and MacDonald accept that the ignorant voter exists, to the extent that voters operate with low levels of information, but reject the notion that the voter acts within a rational choice framework.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Australia's elections are decided by at least a sizable portion of the electorate that does not know about political issues and does not care. They care about their duty to vote but do not necessarily go to the ballot box armed with much knowledge.

Finally, the Cato Institute comments that:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2372

Democracy demands an informed electorate. Voters who lack adequate knowledge about politics will find it difficult to control public policy. Inadequate voter knowledge prevents government from reflecting the will of the people in any meaningful way. Such ignorance also raises doubts about democracy as a means of serving the interests of a majority. Voters who lack sufficient knowledge may be manipulated by elites. They may also demand policies that contravene their own interests.

If we wonder about the reason there is so little change, and some extraordinary voting within Jersey, we can see the same pattern emerging even within our own Island. Manifestos and pamphlets are issued at election time, and people may read the information, and may listen to the hustings, but there is often historical ignorance of what the candidates have actually done, apart from that filtered through their own self-representation of themselves. Endorsements, as with advertising, may also make a difference. What does not seem to make a difference is knowledge!

"A nation of well-informed men, who have been taught to know and prize the rights that God has given them cannot be enslaved.
It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins!" - Benjamin Franklin