Comparing Local, National and EU Knowledge: The Ignorant Public Reassessed

Abstract

Empirical research has repeatedly confirmed the political ignorance of ordinary citizens, but democracy prevails. This article offers a new perspective into this paradox by arguing that typical political knowledge indicators are inadequate because they only measure national‐level knowledge. The study makes two contributions. First, it compares national, local and European Union political knowledge. Second, it does so with a nationally representative dataset, which comes from a survey from Finland (n = 1,020) devoted solely to political knowledge. Two questions are posed: Are the sociodemographic determinants of knowledge the same on all levels of politics? And is public ignorance equally widespread on all levels? Challenging some established findings, the study shows that people in rural communities know more about local politics than urban counterparts, that women know more about local politics than men and that young people are equally knowledgeable about the EU as older people. The results thus indicate that people are to varying extents knowledgeable about varying aspects of politics.

Bridging the enduring gender gap in political interest in Europe: The relevance of promoting gender equality

“…Previous studies have shown that there are topics, such as social welfare, community‐oriented issues and local politics, that women are significantly more interested in and know more about (Campbell & Winters ; Coffé ; Ferrin et al. ; Rapeli ; Stolle & Gidengil ). If political interest means something different for women than it does for men, then increasing the former's levels of interest may involve increasing the salience of those issues women are generally interested in.…”

Leave and Remain voters’ knowledge of the EU after the referendum of 2016

“…Interestingly, while US studies typically find that older people display better political knowledge than younger people (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 2014;Barabas et al, 2014), evidence concerning the relationship between age and EU knowledge is rather mixed. Age and age squared were both non-significant in Rapeli's (2014) 3). We were particularly interested in whether the usual positive effect of age would obtain, given the widespread claim that young people--a majority of whom voted Remain--were betrayed by their parents' and grandparents' generations--a majority of whom voted Leave (Lennard, 2016;Low, 2017).…”

“…There is also some evidence that Liberal Democrat supporters have better political knowledge than both Labour and Conservative supporters (Andersen et al, 2002). Of the foregoing characteristics, male gender, better education and stronger political interest are also among the best predictors of EU knowledge (Clark, 2014;Rapeli, 2014). Interestingly, while US studies typically find that older people display better political knowledge than younger people (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 2014;Barabas et al, 2014), evidence concerning the relationship between age and EU knowledge is rather mixed.…”

Does Sophistication Affect Electoral Outcomes?

“…A similar pattern has recently been discovered in regard to the gap between the Latino minority and the White majority in the US (Pérez 2015). Moreover, young people, who have been branded as a particularly ignorant group, are at least as knowledgeable about the European Union as older age cohorts (Rapeli 2014). The conventional measures of general political knowledge therefore seem to suffer from a certain degree of bias that underestimates the sophistication of certain sociodemographic groups.…”