Ilya Solmin, who just came out with Democracy and Political Ignorance, notes that “high-information” voters aren’t necessarily well-informed:
Just as there are sports fans who love to follow their favorite teams even though they can’t influence the outcomes of games, there are also “political fans” who enjoy following political issues, and cheering for their favorite candidates, parties, or ideologies. I am a political fan myself, as are many of the people who read blogs like Balkinization or the Volokh Conspiracy. So too are most of the people with an unusually high level of knowledge of politics, in the general population. The single most powerful predictor of political knowledge – more important even than education – is interest in politics.
There is nothing wrong with being a political fan. But if you are seeking out political information for the purpose of enhancing your fan experience, that objective is often inimical to the goal of seeking out the truth. Much like sports fans, political fans tend to evaluate new information in a highly biased way. They overvalue anything that supports their preexisting views, and undervalue or ignore new data that cuts against them, even to the extent of misinterpreting simple data that they could easily interpret correctly in other contexts.
The Dish 