Saturday, November 1, 2008

Pickin' on Palin

I hate to pick on Sarah Palin. She's been victim enough, but a Newsweek poll asks respondents if Palin is "well informed about major domestic and foreign policy issues, or not"?

Thirty-five percent say she's well informed. Fifty-seven percent say -- not. Eight percent don't know, are unsure, or couldn't care less. No breakdown by presidential preference or party identification, which is too bad.

Again, not gonna pick on Palin. She's brought a lot of energy to the McCain campaign, and some damn good SNL skits. But it's always interesting when people judge the knowledge of others. The ANES surveys include a question I truly love, one in which the interviewer estimates at the end of the survey the intelligence of the interviewee. It's a damned good predictor of lots of other factors, from education to how well those respondents answered other knowledge questions.

In other words, people can sometimes be pretty good estimators of this kind of thing, even people they barely know.

So am I Pickin' on Palin? Maybe. Then again, who hasn't?

1 comment:

John Arkwright said...

I watched the Biden vs. Palin debate. Biden said incredibly stupid things that were not mere slips of the tongue. The reverse was not true.

So how smart is Sarah Palin? Judging from the debate, she compares favorably with any candidate we've seen. She is relatively young--give her two years and she'll be able to debate any Democrat in the mix.