If I were a GOP pollster diligently applying my trade, surveying and interviewing thousands upon thousands of my fellow partisans about their views of all things political, and in the course of this work I discovered that my fellow partisans arrived at their views only because they're extraordinarily ill-read, ill-schooled Morlocks who haven't the vaguest notion of world and national affairs, I just might rethink my own partisanship.
Belonging to the party of the shockingly ignorant is not a belonging I'd long for ever again. It was with wonder, then, that I read this utterance from Republican pollster Bill McInturff: "It’s almost comic. If you’re one of the remaining Americans who say you read a newspaper to get news, you are voting for Biden by 49 points."
Pollster Bill wasn't kidding about the well-nigh comedy of it all. NBC News' latest polling on presidential candidates also chose to inquire about the information-gathering habits of the candidates' supporters. Turned out — granted, this is less than shocking — voters who read go for Biden by 70%, while the majority of Morlocks opt for Trump.
Now I'm sure pollster McInturff is a reasonably well-read and perhaps even impressively educated guy. Thus my wonderment. Given his intellectual background, how could he belong to a party of ignoramuses, by ignoramuses, and for ignoramuses? Holy mother of God its presidential nominee — 2016, 2020 and 2024 — is the most gargantuan ignoramus of them all. And currently he's searching for an ignoramus nearly as ignorant as he for backup ignorance as a veep candidate.
I should pause ever briefly and stress inter alia that ignorance is not synonymous with stupidity. Ignorance is a choice. And when applied to voting, it burdens the nation's welfare — and thus it burdens you and me.
The graph identifies the split among voters who "don't follow political news." The phrase sounds a bit loosey-goosey, as in, they pay little attention, they might catch a snippet here and there, but that's about it. No, not so. NBC News' coverage of the survey identifies them as "voters who don’t follow political news at all." In short, they know only who's running on which ticket, nothing more.
McInturff's Democratic co-pollster, Jeff Horwitt, remarked that politically blinkered voters also pay no attention to legal news — even cases that most folks would likely be interested in, such as, oh, an ex-president of the United States facing 34 criminal counts in a New York State trial. The blinkered were probably hooked daily on O.J.'s court tribulations, but not Trump's — so naturally, the judicially purblind go heavily for the ex.
Horwitt further remarked on the immovability of this crowd. "These are voters who have tuned out information... That’s why it’s hard to move this race based on actual news. They aren’t seeing it, and they don’t care," he observed.
If that depresses you, it shouldn't. And here are two reasons why it shouldn't, based on NBC's polling results. First, McInturff and Horwitt looked only at registered voters, who, as you know, are not always voting voters. Still, among this group, Biden led Trump 39%-37% in a multi-candidate field. That suggests Biden's lead was likely wider among likely voters.
In fact, the term "registered voters" should be sacked for gross negligence and taking excessive sick days. This group would be better termed "registered Americans," since voting skews its accuracy of definition.
The second and more endearing reason you should lift your heart is this: Blessed are the ignorant, for they vote with far less frequency than informed voters. NBC's polling found that nearly 60% of 2020 and 2022 voters "primarily consume[d] traditional media." These were newspaper readers. Only 9% of those who voted in the last two elections followed no political news whatsoever, and just 19% of those of voted in the 2020 presidential election alone followed no news.
We concede a certain degree of depressive thought when learning that roughly one of every five voters in 2020 was, to borrow from my own intro, an extraordinarily ill-read, ill-schooled Morlock who hadn't the vaguest notion of world and national affairs. And yet this idiot was pulling a lever for a potential president of the United States.
I'm rather sympathetic to the School of Voter Competence. My suggestion would be that every 10 years, or something like that, every voter must pass the naturalization test required of immigrants seeking citizenship. My money would be on the immigrants, since nearly half of American natives slept through civics in middle school and so grew up to be Trump voters.
Years ago I read the hair-raising results of one survey in which real Americans were stopped on the street, read passages from a document and were then asked to identify said document. Almost half replied that it sounded like a communist manifesto of some sort. It was the U.S. Constitution. And some of those clowns were voters.
Most weren't, though. And that's today's happy news. But I'm still worried about Bill McInturff.
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