{"id":5035,"date":"2016-11-08T07:38:29","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T12:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=5035"},"modified":"2016-11-08T07:38:29","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T12:38:29","slug":"low-information-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=5035","title":{"rendered":"Low-information voters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com\/2016\/11\/trumps-base-low-information-voters.html\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Hamar<\/a> has turned-up a piece at the <i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/monkey-cage\/wp\/2016\/11\/07\/low-information-voters-are-a-crucial-part-of-trumps-support\/\" target=\"_blank\">Washington Post<\/a><\/i> about research at the University of Alabama which upholds something many of us have doubtless suspected: Trump voters are low-information voters.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Our research finds that Trump has attracted a disproportionate (and unprecedented) number of \u201clow-information voters\u201d to his campaign. Furthermore, these voters are more likely to respond to emotional appeals \u2014 whether about the economy, immigration, Muslims, racial relations, sexism, and even hostility to the first African American U.S. president, Barack Obama. They are the ideal constituency for a candidate like Trump.<\/p>\n<p>We define low-information voters as those who do not know certain basic facts about government and lack what psychologists call a \u201cneed for cognition.\u201d Those with a high need for cognition have a positive attitude toward tasks that require reasoning and effortful thinking and are, therefore, more likely to invest the time and resources to do so when evaluating complex issues. Those with a low need for cognition, on the other hand, find little reward in the collection and evaluation of new information when it comes to problem solving and the consideration of competing issue positions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That sounds about right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Hamar has turned-up a piece at the Washington Post about research at the University of Alabama which upholds something many of us have doubtless suspected: Trump voters are low-information voters. Our research finds that Trump has attracted a disproportionate &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=5035\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5035"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5036,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5035\/revisions\/5036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}