A TV station took the three infamous Pew political knowledge questions, blogged about so often by myself and others, and asked some of their local politicians to see how well they did. The story is here. As you may remember, only 18 percent of Americans got all three questions right. Here's a summary of the Pew study based on a PR release rather than the study itself, only because I'm tired of linking to Pew. The El Paso politicians did about as well as the public, maybe a bit better.
The media differences seen in the PR release I've blogged on before, so I don't want to repeat myself any more than is usual for me. Just tossed this out for those who like to keep up with this kind of thing (which, let's face it, is an audience of 1 -- me)
Like Colbert did below (see the video link in my earlier post), it'd be more fun to take these questions to the general public. There's a problem, though, something more methodological than anything else -- people get pissed if you ask them tough knowledge questions they can't answer, so you (1) put them at the end of a survey and (2) always preface them with something like "not everyone can answer these, so it's okay if you're a complete political moron" and can't do it. Well, not exactly those words, but something nice that tells them it's okay if they don't know.
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