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What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters, by Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. 397 pp. $38.50 cloth. ISBN: 0-300-06256-7.
One of the earliest findings emerging from the introduction of scientific sampling techniques in political behavior research during the 1940s and 1950s was the markedly low level of political knowledge among the American public. The case for a factually challenged public, developed by scholars at Columbia University and the University of Michigan, was so convincing that survey researchers for a time stopped asking questions about political information. Delli Carpini and Keeter's study represents a culmination of renewed interest in these questions. Analyzing a wealth of survey data (including new data collections), Delli Carpini and Keeter (hereafter DCK) have developed the most comprehensive analysis to date of the level and distribution of political information. In keeping with past studies, they find that the median proportion of correct answers to knowledge questions in various substantive areas never tops 50 percent. While some political-legal "rules of the game" elicit near-universal understanding (89 percent of Americans can define a presidential veto),...