stupid Bush voters

From "Debunking Political Stereotypes:"

The idea that Bush voters are reality-challenged is based partly on surveys showing that a large percentage of Bush supporters believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or a program to develop them. Many also persist in the belief that Iraq had substantial ties to the Al Qaeda. Other Republicans who support tougher environmental and labor standards incorrectly assume that Bush favors these positions as well.

Is this a damning indictment of Bush voters and conservatives? George Mason University law professor David Bernstein, a libertarian who was highly critical of both candidates in the past election, points out on the Volokh Conspiracy blog that in other surveys, Republicans have on average scored higher than Democrats on knowledge of political issues than Democrats -- though voters across the board tend to be woefully ill-informed. Bernstein speculates that in the more recent polls, ignorant Bush supporters were likely to pick answers flattering to Bush, while ignorant Kerry voters did the opposite.

Furthermore, on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, the evidence leaves room for some ambiguity. I know intelligent and well-informed people who believe it is quite likely that Hussein managed to get his stockpiles out of the country before the invasion. As for collaboration between Hussein's regime and terrorist groups, it clearly did exist; the only question is how substantial it was.

Is it possible that Republican voters are likely to fall for the administration's spin on these issues? Of course. But is there any evidence that Democratic voters are less likely to fall for their own side's spin or to buy into their own side's myths? Not really. I'm willing to bet that if you asked people whether it's true or false that President Bush wanted to allow higher levels of arsenic in drinking water after he took office (a charge made in a MoveOn.org ad), a lot more Kerry supporters than Bush supporters would have said it was true. Yet this claim has been conclusively debunked as a lie by New Republic writer Greg Easterbrook, who is no conservative and no Bush supporter.

Democrats, I suspect, would also be much more likely to believe that if the Florida recount in 2000 had not been halted by the Supreme Court, Al Gore would have won the state and the election. In fact, a 2001 review of the Florida ballots by a media consortium concluded that both the recount in several Democratic counties that Gore had requested and the statewide recount of undervotes that was actually underway would have given a victory to Bush (though Gore could have won under some other recount scenarios). And, no doubt, far more Kerry supporters than Bush supporters believed Kerry's groundless claim in a campaign stump speech that one million African-American votes weren't counted in Florida.

(Read the whole thing, then...) Let the enlightened among us comment away!