Reexamining the “Racial Gap” in Political Knowledge

Abstract

Scholars have long lamented the low levels of political knowledge in the American public, particularly the “racial gap” in the rates of knowledge between racial/ethnic minorities and whites. This article examines whether the racial gap is an artifact of perceptual biases or differential item functioning, brought about by the distinct political experiences of racial/ethnic minorities in the United States. In analyzing data from the 2008 American National Election Studies, the raw responses to political knowledge questions indeed reveal a discrepancy in blacks’ and Latinos’ placements of prominent political figures when compared to whites. However, once these perceptual biases are corrected for, the racial gap dissipates. Blacks and Latinos are able to accurately identify the positions of prominent political candidates and parties on a range of policies across the liberal-conservative dimension. These findings pose several implications for our current understanding of the uneven distributions of political knowledge in the nation.

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