Let Me Help The Live Science Folks

A group called Live Science has an article out talking about how politically savvy Americans are by asking them 3 questions. The questions were:
1) Which political party controls congress?
2) Who is the current Secretary of State?
3) Who is the current Prime Minister of Britain?

In summing up their findings they published this quote.

A perfect score was obtained by 44 percent of regular listeners of National Public Radio (NPR), 43 percent of regular viewers of MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and 42 percent of the Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" audience. Thirty-four percent of "The Colbert Report" audience and 30 percent of "The Daily Show" audience got all three questions correct.

A perfect score means they got all three questions correct. They then went on to show the breakdown according to news source, and here is how it was published.

* The New Yorker/Atlantic: 71 percent (correctly identified Democrats as the majority in the House), 71 percent (correctly identified Condeleeza Rice), 59 percent (correctly identified Gordon Brown)
* NPR: 73 percent, 72 percent, 57percent
* Hannity & Colmes: 84 percent, 73 percent, 49 percent
* Rush Limbaugh: 83 percent, 71 percent, 41 percent
* Colbert Report: 73 percent, 65 percent, 49 percent
* Daily Show: 65 percent, 48 percent, 36 percent
* NewsHour: 66 percent, 52 percent, 47 percent
* O'Reilly Factor: 70 percent, 60 percent, 41 percent
* C-SPAN: 63 percent, 59 percent, 35 percent
* Letterman/Leno: 51 percent, 42 percent, 31 percent
* CNN: 59 percent, 48 percent, 29 percent
* National Enquirer: 44 percent, 32 percent, 22 percent

Now being the good data analyst that I am I noticed right off something looked funny, so I resorted the results. Here is the order of my results.


* Hannity & Colmes: 84 percent, 73 percent, 49 percent
* Rush Limbaugh: 83 percent, 71 percent, 41 percent
* Colbert Report: 73 percent, 65 percent, 49 percent
* NPR: 73 percent, 72 percent, 57percent
* The New Yorker/Atlantic: 71 percent, 71 percent, 59 percent
* O'Reilly Factor: 70 percent, 60 percent, 41 percent
* Daily Show: 65 percent, 48 percent, 36 percent
* NewsHour: 66 percent, 52 percent, 47 percent
* C-SPAN: 63 percent, 59 percent, 35 percent
* Letterman/Leno: 51 percent, 42 percent, 31 percent
* CNN: 59 percent, 48 percent, 29 percent
* National Enquirer: 44 percent, 32 percent, 22 percent

Why the resort? Simple really. I feel the question about the prime minister of England to not be as important as the questions about American politics and second when you sort based on questions 1 and 2 a very different picture emerges. 3 of the top 6 best informed happen to be folks who watch or listen to those evil right wing or conservative leaning shows. A comedy show has a more informed audience then NPR.
So when you look at which audiences are more informed about the landscape of the American political scene you see that the conservative voices are doing a far better service the the left leaning ones. Not that this will a defense when the Democrat congress enacts the Fairness Doctrine to shut them down. The liberals and Democrats actually rely on the dumbing down of America to maintain their hold on power, all the while painting a picture of conservatives as one step up on the evolutionary scale from Cro-Magnon man.
This survey certainly doesn't put CSPAN and CNN in a very good light. And I guess MSNBC couldn't be reached for comment, either that or nobody taking the study would actually admit to watching it. Notice that Hardball, after being touted at the begining has having 43% get perfect scores is missing in the breakdown. Maybe it was all or nothing for them.