Congress's approval rating correlates inversely with knowledge about Congress

This is an interesting test of how much the unwashed masses affect Congress's low approval rating. Turns out the uninformed are more positive than the informed.

Quote:

Gallup set out to examine what is behind these negative attitudes: Do they arise out of a sense of displeasure rooted in weakly informed assumptions and impressions, or are they serious complaints resulting from paying close attention to Congress and what it is doing? The answer to that question is important because it can help guide efforts by those who care about the legitimacy of this important institution and want to repair its tattered image. To that aim, Gallup asked Americans a set of five questions measuring their knowledge of specific facts about Congress, its operations and its leadership: Do you happen to know how many U.S. senators there are from each state? Would you happen to know which chamber of Congress -- the House of Representatives or the Senate -- is responsible for confirming federal judges? For how many years are members of the U.S. House of Representatives elected -- that is, how many years are there in one term of office? Do you happen to know which political party -- the Democratic or Republican -- currently has the most members in the U.S. House of Representatives? And do you happen to know the name of the majority leader in the U.S. Senate? The results show that 17% of Americans are highly informed, answering four or five knowledge questions correctly. Another third correctly answered two or three questions, and about a quarter each could answer one or none correctly. ... The relationship between Americans' knowledge of Congress' workings and their evaluation of the job it is doing is remarkably strong. Negative ratings of Congress are higher at each level of political knowledge. Only 29% of those who answer none of the five questions correctly think Congress is doing a poor or bad job. This rises to 46% among those answering one question correctly, to 56% among those answering two or three correctly and to 66% among those answering four or five questions correctly. In other words, the more Americans know about Congress, the more likely they are to say it is doing a poor or bad job.

Linky.

In terms of the scores themselves they are about what I would expect.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1VhCo9h