Study: American Voters Dumb as Ever!

Back in 1960, four University of Michigan professors published a landmark study that, to the nation's utter shock, found that Americans are nothing but lemmings when it comes to our most sacred Democratic rite, voting. Titled "The American Voter," the study revealed that, by and large, Democrats and Republicans voted for their respective parties for no better reason than that was what their parents had done before them. Independents, the study claimed, were even less informed than their partisan neighbors. In fact, if anything, they were less interested and involved in politics than the donkeys or the elephants.

Over the ensuing 48 years, a lot has changed in our country. We've seen great leaders assassinated, fought a disastrous war in Vietnam, seen a president resign in disgrace, helped dismantle the Soviet Union, learned interesting uses for Altoids, and invaded Iraq based on faulty intelligence. In short, we've been given every reason to start paying attention to the issues that face our country so that we can make an informed decision about who we elect to governmental office. What's that old saying? Something about learning from the mistakes of the past so that we're not doomed to repeat them in the present?

Well, consider us doomed. That's the gist of an update to "The American Voter," aptly titled, "The American Voter Revisited."

Once again, four smart people have gotten together to look down from their ivory tower across the landscape populated with frighteningly unthoughtful voters. And, once again, we're learning about what we already knew. From The Washington Post:

"The American Voter Revisited" is chock-full of depressing conclusions, couched in academic understatement. In-depth interviews conducted with 1,500 people during the two most recent presidential elections revealed that the "majority of people don't have many issues in mind" when they discuss voting, (study co-author Michael) Lewis-Beck says. Sometimes they say they're attracted to a candidate because "I just don't think we should change parties right now." They tend to inherit their party allegiance from their parents, and those beliefs tend to stay fixed throughout their lives, he says.

Just as in 1960, American voters aren't really paying attention. Despite the 24-hour campaign coverage on the teevee and the internets, for the most part, the electorate seems to be set on auto-pilot, as Lewis-Black, detailed in an interview with the University of Michigan Press:

...do socio-economic conditions and, especially, party identification, still largely determine how Americans vote? Are voters still mostly inattentive to politics, with a rather low level of interest in politics, and very little under standing of the liberal-conservative debate raging at the elite level? The answer to these questions, perhaps surprisingly, is "yes." In other words, the typical American voter follows pretty much the same cues as he or she did fifty years ago.

Yes, the Times They Are a Changin', and the more they change, the more they stay the same.