American political attitudes have changed little in 50 years [GALLO/GETTY]

"No-one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
H L Mencken

Almost 50 years ago, when Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House, a group of social scientists did an exhaustive survey of American voters. 

Their work focused on voter attitudes, expertise and ability to form opinions on issues. It was published in 1960 under the title "The American Voter".

In focus

In-depth coverage of US presidential election

The surveys showed most 1950s Americans were dismally ill-informed on the issues, knew next to nothing about politics and cared even less.

So when a new generation of scholars decided to re-do the work and see how much better informed 21st century Americans are, compared to their grandparents, they expected to see a big difference.  

"We took the same questions, the same surveys, the same information and updated it to our most recent presidential elections" in 2000 and 2004, says co-author Michael Lewis Beck, a University of Iowa political scientist, who I interviewed in his office in Iowa City.

'Shocking' findings

Are Americans tuning out the candidates' messages? [GALLO/GETTY]

That was the era of the hula-hoop, the Davy Crockett coonskin cap, and just three television channels.

This is the era of the IPhone, Blu-Ray discs, and a nonstop plethora of political information: cable news channels, tracking polls, blogs, websites, pundits and talking heads galore.

Voters surely must absorb all this nattering and use it as the basis for wise political choices. 
 
Alas, it ain't so. Lewis-Beck called the new findings a "shocker".
 
"The American voter processes information about politics and candidates [but] they think about that essentially the same way they did 50 years ago," he says.
 
In their book, "The American Voter Revisited", Lewis-Beck and his colleagues found Americans tune out most of that flood of information on the air and online.

'Cognitive misers' 

Obama's "change" may not be getting through to voters [EPA]

"American voters are busy people and it's a question of how they allocate their time," Lewis-Beck says.

"Most voters most of the time don't pay any attention to politics. They don't know a lot about politics, they don't follow politics, they maybe - if they are lucky - keep one or two issues at most on their minds.

"They don't connect the issues together, and they don't associate the issues with a candidate."

Most people can't even come up with a definition of what it means to be   conservative or liberal.

And they don't choose which party they support after careful ideological analysis; they simply inherit the preferences of their parents.

The economy, stupid  
 

"They do care about the economy, a lot," Lewis-Beck says.

"There's no single issue that more reliably hurts the party in the White House or helps the party in the White House.

"If the economy is going bad the party in the White House, whether it is Republican or Democrat, that party is going to lose a lot of votes."

As for foreign policy, forget it. Unless the United States is at war - as it is now in Afghanistan and Iraq - voters simply do not care about what is going on elsewhere in the world.

"Foreign policy is a non-starter," Lewis-Beck explains. "If there's not a war foreign policy is on nobody's mind."

'No fools'

Karen Martin of Westminster, Maryland says, "I just really need to decipher it and figure out what, who I want to vote for, and I'm not there yet."

Tanisha Brown of San Diego, who is African-American, said she did not know much about Barack Obama's policy positions, but planned to vote for him because "he looks like me. That's all I can say, he looks like me".

One man who declined to give his name commented ruefully: "A lot of people talked about how they voted for George Bush because he was the kind of guy we'd wanna have a beer with. Well, that worked out real well."

While the new research may seem to put American voters in an unflattering light, information-wise, Lewis-Beck says that is not the point.

"We don't think they're fools," he cautions.

"We think they're wise users of their time. They know the basics, they know what's important to them and they go about their jobs, putting food on the table and taking the kids to the dentist."

"They don't know the policy details, but they don't need to know the policy details. They know the policy outcomes. They know what they're living through."

"They know if their son is in combat, they know if their neighbour is unemployed. They experience the results of the policy. And they decide whether on the basis of their experience whether the person in charge is doing a good job."

Lack of participation

Unfortunately, only about 50 to 60 per cent of Americans vote in any given presidential election.

And a much smaller number are deeply involved in politics to the extent of attending debates, raising money for a candidate or volunteering in a campaign.

But the people who think participation in politics is a waste of time lose out in the end, Lewis Beck says.

"The more you participate in politics the more you get out of the system," he says.

"The people who participate more in the system are the haves: The people who have more wealth, more education.

"The people who participate least in the system are poor people, disadvantaged people. And they get less out of the system. So there is a consequence."