The mindless middle: Centrist voters know less civics than right and left do

Parsing those numbers further, what we see is engagement at each party’s base. A solid 70 percent of conservative Republicans passed, followed by 61 percent of GOP moderates and 55 percent of GOP liberals. For Democrats, it was the opposite: liberals and moderates proved better informed, with 62 percent of both groups passing, but just 36 percent of conservative Democrats did so. In other words, conservative Democrats pulled down the numbers for both their ideology and their party, while the centers of both parties were the least engaged.

This illustrates something quite dangerous. The operative theory about America’s political situation holds that the fringe of each party is poorly informed, and the middle possesses the wisdom, but our numbers show it’s actually the extremes that are engaged—and thus, up on their facts—while the middle is relatively ill informed.

More than lacking knowledge, a lot of Americans, particularly in the middle, have completely tuned out. And given how little they know, it will be hard to get them back. Here’s the most telling number: Americans who vote regularly in elections tested above average—68 percent passed—but among the one in 10 who told us they weren’t interested in exercising their franchise, just 26 percent would qualify to be citizens of their own country.