I've already shown in the last few posts of mine in this thread that that was an incorrect assumption made by NPT. I can see how he could have came to that conclusion if that was the only thing provided in the report. But other statistics shown indicate that Republicans are actually more informed about politics than Democrats.
Back briefly, but I don't agree I have made an incorrect assumption at all, PHP. Here is what the stats show: 1. Dems source more news than republicans, and no, again, it isn't just evening network news, but all sources of news; 2. There isn't a significant difference between age segments in terms of how much news is sourced throughout the day; 2. Older people, which you correlate with conservatives more generally, get the news wrong more often than younger people; 3. The stat you source as proof that Republicans are more informed about politics than Democrats is, literally, a set of three questions: who the majority party is, who the secretary of state is, and who the British prime minister is. I've extensively designed studies, and I will say it plainly, that this is a ridiculous measure of "political knowledge" generally. One flag that should stand out as to the efficacy of (3) is that (2) conflicts with (3); given that the GOP is stronger among older voters, while the Democrats are stronger among younger voters. (See http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/US/H/00/epolls.0.html, for example), and older voters only got the answer right "10% of the time," one cannot say that the GOP is both "more informed" and "wrong more of the time."
I'm not sure how you would dispute this, PHP. Again, Again, these three news source segments exhaust all sources of news. On each of them, and on the total news, Dems outdo Republicans. If you trust the data, the position cannot be disputed. Of those using news from any source, more are Democrats than Republicans, across the board. Your figure is for "news watched yesterday." From the graph you reference, you will note older people do what is expected - they read the paper, and watch evening TV. The trend reverses over radio (35-49 year olds take top position) and the internet (25-34 year olds take the top, and the older folks - the highest segment for newspaper sourcing, are markedly low for internet). Even using the graph you point us to, that graph doesn't show what you are concluding. It shows old folks like newspaper and evening news, young folks like radio and the internet, all in terms of one variable, "news accessed yesterday." This isn't surprising, and is corroborated by the data discussed below. Beyond this, you're using the wrong stat, in a word. To that end, let me repeat this as well: PHP, this is stuff I've already posted. You had made the statement that younger people got it wrong more often than older people. The above shows that in at least one correlation, this isn't true. That more Republicans tend to know the answer to who the majority party is, who the Secretary of State is, and who the Vice President is - but this is no indicator of "news knowledge," by any statistical quality standard. In any true indicator, an entire battery of questions would be employed, across a host of news "issues." I can only say that as I come from quantitative historical research, and have dealt with 1000's of extensive, quantitative databases, this is a truly lousy indicator of "knowledge of the news," generally. The three questions simply ask for who holds two political titles, and who is the majority party. Pick anything from the hat - how about economics? Business? Education? Social Policy? A plethora of other areas that would render an effective measure as to "who is up on the news." Please see above.