Many posts have discussed what Americans do and do not know about their government.
If you’re reading this memo, you probably know what the filibuster is. But it turns out that a plurality of Americans don’t!
The good news is that voters do know which parties control which branches of the federal government. A majority of voters overall (and a plurality of young voters) were able to correctly identify that Republicans currently control the House of Representatives and Democrats currently control the Senate. Large majorities of both voters overall and voters under 30 correctly identified Republicans as the party that has appointed a majority of sitting Supreme Court justices.
But when asked to identify the correct description of each process out of a list of three (including two incorrect options), there was a substantial age gap: young voters were much less likely than voters overall to identify the correct description of how the Supreme Court appointment, Electoral College, and constitutional amendment processes work. They were also less likely to identify the correct definition of “gerrymandering” than voters overall. A plurality of both young voters (48.4%) and voters overall (40.3%) said that they did not know which description of the Senate filibuster was most accurate.
