Political Awareness

Here are 3 questions posed to a random sample of 3,612 of American Adults:

1) Who is the controlling party in the U.S. House of Representatives?

2) Who is the Secretary of State?

3) Who is the Prime Minister of Britain?


Did you get all three? Would it surprise you that only 18% of individuals received a perfect score. The Pew Research Center compiled a breakdown of the results by the different news audiences that respondents most closely identified with. For the record, no one was given the Sarah Palin option of saying she utilized all news sources.


- National Public Radio: 73 percent (correctly identified Democrats as the majority in the House), 72 percent (correctly identified Condeleeza Rice), 57 percent (correctly identified Gordon Brown)

- New Yorker/Atlantic Monthly: 71 percent , 71 percent, 59 percent

- Colbert Report: 73 percent, 65 percent, 49 percent

- O'Reilly Factor: 70 percent, 60 percent, 41 percent

- Daily Show: 65 percent, 48 percent, 36 percent

- CNN: 59 percent, 48 percent, 29 percent

- National Enquirer: 44 percent, 32 percent, 22 percent