The left-leaning Pew Research Center provides the latest example.
Each year, Pew conducts its "What Do Americans Know" survey, which tests respondents on a series of questions. This year, the topics included the federal minimum wage, the territory occupied by ISIS, the Ukraine, Common Core educational proposals, fracking, where the Ebola virus is centered, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the U.S. poverty rate, where Shiite Muslims outnumber Sunnis, who chairs the Federal Reserve, where the federal government spends most and the U.S. unemployment rate. Unsurprisingly, older adults demonstrated greater knowledge than their younger counterparts, as did better-educated respondents.
But buried at the bottom of the survey report lies the subject heading "Partisan Differences in Knowledge," which itemizes each question and the percentage of Republicans, Democrats and Independents who answered each one correctly.
So how stark were the partisan knowledge differentials?
Out of 12 questions asked, Republicans outperformed both Democrats and Independents on 10. The differences were most pronounced on the questions regarding Common Core, fracking and where Shiites outnumber Sunnis, where the percentage of Republicans answering correctly outpaced Democrats by double digits. But Republicans also outperformed Democrats on questions centering on the federal minimum wage and the Fed Chairwoman, even though she's a Democrat appointed by Obama, while the minimum wage is Democrats' favorite wedge issue this election year to try to keep Harry Reid (D - Nevada) as the Senate Majority Leader.
Democrats only outscored Republicans in naming the primary Ebola outbreak location and the federal poverty rate, but only by 2 and 5 percentage points, respectively.
That obviously amounts to a lopsided Republican advantage in knowledge. But take a look at how Pew attempted to soften the findings:
"Differences in news knowledge across partisan groups are relatively modest, though Republicans tend to do somewhat better than Democrats overall. Republicans are 16 points more likely than Democrats to answer the Common Core question correctly (58% vs. 42%). And 57% of Republicans identify the oil industry as a primary driver of growth in North Dakota, compared with 42% of Democrats. On other issues, such as the unemployment rate, there are hardly any differences in news knowledge between Republicans and Democrats. Just 38% of Republicans and 34% of Democrats know that the unemployment rate is currently closest to 6%. Many Americans overestimate the current unemployment rate: 27% say it is closest to 9%, while an additional 18% think the rate is closest to 12%."
Think about that for a moment.
Imagine two football teams playing 12 head-to-head games, with one winning 10 and the other 2. It would be preposterous for a sportswriter to describe that differential as "relatively modest," or that the team winning 10 of 12 games performed "somewhat better" than the team that lost 10 of 12.
This year's results parallel surveys from previous years, so it's not as though it should have come as an unwelcome surprise to the left-leaning Pew.
In 2012, Republicans outscored Democrats on 11 of 12 items. Yet in that instance Pew also described Republicans' performance as "somewhat better" than Democratic voters. In the 2011 Pew survey, Republicans outperformed Democrats on every single one of 19 questions, and in 2010 Republicans tested better than Democrats on 10 of 12 questions, with 1 tie score and Democrats testing better on just 1.
You're good at neither. You have no idea what you're talking about and I'm not going to waste any further time on this. If you want to wallow in ignorance that's your privilege.
