Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Personal Polling

Here's a neat story from the University of Alabama-Birmingham's student news site where a columnist did his own political knowledge polling. And you gotta love or groan at the headline: Political prowess proves paltry.

He surveyed 118 UAB students, found McCain and Obama supporters did about as well on a political knowledge quiz. An easy quiz. He asked students to name a current member of Congress, a current Supreme Court justice, and the current vice president. I call this an easy quiz because you can pluck just one name from many, but it's also hard because you have to drag the name out of memory as opposed to prompting with the name and asking for the office. Still, how hard can it be? Name a justice, any justice?

Apparently, harder than I imagined. See the story for the results, and a good job by the columnist, Daniel Sims, at taking the poll out into the street.

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