"People Who Watch Only Fox News
Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"
Public Policy Polling continues its groundbreaking scientific research into finding out what Republican voters are forever going on about. We haven't yet been able to open a stable portal to the Republican voter dimension, but we are learning more about it!
There continues to be a lot of misinformation about what has happened during Obama's time in office. 43% of voters think the unemployment rate has increased while Obama has been President, to only 49% who correctly recognize that it has decreased. And 32% of voters think the stock market has gone down during the Obama administration, to only 52% who correctly recognize that it has gone up. In both cases Democrats and independents are correct in their understanding of how things have changed since Obama became President, but Republicans claim by a 64/27 spread that unemployment has increased and by a 57/27 spread that the stock market has gone down.
Our task here, should we choose to accept it, is to interpret that little oddity. So do Republican voters believe unemployment has gone up on Obama's watch simply because they don't like Obama and presume everything is worse under him, or do they not like Obama because they falsely believe unemployment has gone up and are therefore blaming him?
Hmm. We know people who watch Fox News are gloriously uninformed about whatever "issues" Fox News chooses to pontificate on. Perhaps this is mere side effect of the leading Republican news outlet enforcing a strict partisan code of stupidity?
Or maybe two-thirds of Republican voters have a pretty good idea that unemployment is not in fact worse, but are just saying so anyway? Because reasons?
Nope, it’s a mystery. We've been seeing polls with similar numbers throughout Obama's term of office. Republicans are keen to believe President Obama isn't even a true American, and that he might be a secret Muslim, and all sorts of things besides—so merely not knowing the basic facts or trends of the things they're complaining about seems tame in comparison.
“It’s a fact that unemployment has gone down and the stock market has gone up during the Obama administration,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “But GOP voters treat these things more as issues of opinion than issues of fact.”
They sure do. And thus, the Donald Trump campaign was born.
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