So it seems we are now having a food fight on the reclist about “Low Information” voters. I’d just like to remind everyone that the term should not be taken a synonymous with stupid.
Many older voters remember a time when TV News was considered a reliable news source and the internet was considered almost the definition of an unreliable source. This has changed with the entry of major news organizations online and the foxification of cable and TV news. Many low information voters are using news sources that, for most of their lives, were taken as being reliable and avoiding those that they have been told are unreliable. Unfortunately, circumstances have changed.
Speaking of reliable online news sources, those are hard to come by. Both the New York Times and Washington Post have paywalled websites. Subscriptions are not cheap. While the paywalls can be circumvented, it requires technical skill to get the right browser and plugin setting. Huffingtonpost is a partisan source. We shouldn’t blame people for thinking a partisan source is not reliable. That leaves what, Bloomberg or maybe Yahoo news? Many Americans simply cannot afford access to the information required to be high information voters.
Speaking of which, its quite possible for voters to try to become high information voters and find themselves less informed than when they started. Coming at this without preconceptions, a logical place to start finding information would be the radio, television news and the websites of television news channels. If radio means right wing talk, television news is fox news and the websites are equally right wing, then it’s possible to — acting in good faith — develop a completely erroneous view of events.
So no, low information voters aren’t stupid. In fact they may be seeking information in places that they where taught — during the 1990s and early 2000s — represent good and accurate world source. What they don’t know is that the world has changed, and this is a problem.