by Matt Barr

Your civics lesson: become a Republican

The American Bar Association released the results of a poll of 1,002 American adults (press release; PDF summary of results) which covered how well people know what the branches of government are, what separation of powers means, what checks and balances are, and what the role of the federal judiciary is.

"[T]here’s a need for more public education on how these principles work. There are some significant gaps in peoples’ knowledge, and the more people know, the more they appreciate these important constitutional concepts,” Michael S. Greco, president-elect of the ABA, said. I'll say:

• 55 percent correctly identified the three branches of government
• 48 percent correctly identified the meaning of separation of powers
• 64 percent correctly identified the concept of checks and balances
• 48 percent correctly identified the role of the judiciary in the federal government

All questions were multiple choice. It's better than you might have expected, I suppose. What boosted your chances of getting these questions right? The PDF linked above is a summary of the poll's findings, not detailed data, but includes a sidebar for each question detailing who was "more likely to provide [a] correct answer." Among the traits of correct answerers were: those earning more than $60,000 a year, post-graduate education, married and registered to vote. Also: Republicans.

Each one! In fact the summary's roundup of "more likely to answer all four correctly" (page 16) says

• Post-graduate education
• Moderates
• Republicans
• Registered voters

"Moderates" is interesting, in that unlike the other three traits it appears nowhere in the sidebars for each individual question identifying the most likely correct respondents. It doesn't appear in the "respondent profile" on the last two pages of the summary, either, so it's hard to glean from the PDF how many respondents identified themselves as "moderate" and what their other choices were.

Also not appearing in the respondent profile: Republican/Democrat. You have your gender, marital status, age, race, education, but no party affiliation. Yet they must have asked, or else there would be no way to say that Republicans were more likely to answer all the questions and each individual one correctly. (It says 48! percent of respondents were unemployed. Maybe they pegged those as the Democrats? Har!)

Anyway, from the little we're told in the summary of results, Republicans appear to know basic constitutional principles better. There's your civics lesson, right there!

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