Conservatives Are Smarter, More Open-Minded Than Liberals

Settled science.

Yet another new survey shows that Republican supporters know more about politics and political history than Democrats.

On eight of 13 questions about politics, Republicans outscored Democrats by an average of 18 percentage points, according to a new Pew survey “Partisan Differences in Knowledge.”

The Pew survey adds to a wave of surveys and studies showing that GOP-sympathizers are better informed, more intellectually consistent, more open-minded, more empathetic and more receptive to criticism than their fellow Americans who support the Democratic Party.

“Republicans fare substantially better than Democrats on several questions in the survey, as is typically the case in surveys about political knowledge,” said the study, which noted that Democrats outscored Republicans on five questions by an average of 4.6 percent.

The widest partisan gap in the survey came in at 30 points when only 46 percent of Democrats — but 76 percent of Republicans —- correctly described the GOP as “the party generally more supportive of reducing the size of federal government.”

The widest difference that favored Democrats was only 8 percent, when 59 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats recognized the liberal party as “more support of reducing the defense budget.”

The survey quizzed 1,000 people, including 239 Republicans and 334 Democrats.

Link to the Pew survey here.

Republicans fare substantially better than Democrats on several questions in the survey, as is typically the case in surveys about political knowledge. The largest gaps are in awareness of which party is more supportive of reducing the size and scope of the federal government (30 points) and which party is more conservative (28 points).

Republicans also are 21 percentage points more likely than Democrats to know that the GOP is more supportive of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

There is only one policy question – which party is more supportive of cutting defense spending – on which Democrats are more knowledgeable than Republicans. Two-thirds of Democrats (67%) identify the Democratic Party as being more supportive of reducing the size of the defense budget, compared with 59% of Republicans.

On the remaining issues – expanding the rights of gays and lesbians, increasing taxes on the wealthy, restricting abortion and providing immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally with a possible “path to citizenship”– there are no significant differences in knowledge between Democrats and Republicans.

Republicans also are more familiar with the partisan affiliation of two leading Democrats – one from the present, Nancy Pelosi, and one from the past, Franklin Roosevelt. Three-quarters (75%) of Republicans know that Pelosi is a Democrat, compared with 59% of Democrats. And while 73% of Republicans identify FDR as a Democrat, just 58% of Democrats do so.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/22/science-say-gop-voters-better-informed-open-minded/#ixzz1sp4Qv9Ct