Student knowledge of politics
I am teaching Intro to Comparative Politics during this summer session, and yesterday for fun I gave my students a quiz on politics, which they could do anonymously. I just wanted to see how much people knew. Here are the results. N=19
How is the number of electoral votes for each state determined?
Correct: 32%
Who is the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives?
Correct: 5% (one person!)
Identify NC’s two senators:
Dole: 21%
Burr: 16%
Two people correctly identified both of them
Identify the Governor of NC:
Correct: 58%
Identify the Mayor of Charlotte:
Correct 47%
These numbers are quite low, of course, though I don’t know offhand how they compare to national surveys. It does help to underline a point I made in class, which was that it just seems so odd that the U.S. utilizes a system for electing its president that very few people understand. Even more odd is that people realize that they don’t understand it, yet still don’t care.
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