America’s left and right are less divided than you might expect

What do americans know about current affairs? Surprisingly little. A recent survey by the Pew Research Centre finds that only around half of adults know the name of the current secretary of state or the capital of Afghanistan. The survey also highlights an interesting divide: between the beliefs of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, on the one hand, and everyone else on the other.

According to Pew, these ideological groups are more likely to correctly answer questions, such as identifying Kim Jong Un as the leader of North Korea or Boris Johnson as prime minister of Britain. Some 83% of liberal Democrats and 80% of conservative Republicans know Roman Catholicism is the main religion in South America, compared with 70% and 67% of their more moderate counterparts.

What explains this? The dominant theory in political science is that a person who is aware of current events is also more likely to know which party best represents their preferences. That enables them to pick the right partisan label. Knowledge, then, is not a product of partisanship and ideology, but a cause of it.

Pew’s study also finds that Americans with “high” knowledge of international affairs (those who answered at least nine of the 12 questions correctly) have different opinions on foreign countries and international organisations from those who are less knowledgeable. Americans with high knowledge are 17 percentage points more likely to have a favourable view of the EU than those with low knowledge (those who answered four or fewer questions correctly) regardless of their political affiliation. Well-informed Democrats and Republicans are also 30 points more likely to see tensions between China and Taiwan as a “very serious problem” for America, and are 16 points more likely to answer that China’s policies on human rights are a threat. At least on some issues, the well-informed on the left and right are more united than you might expect. ■

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