Dick Cheney? Didn't He Shoot Somebody?: Measuring Political Knowledge in the 2008 American National Election Study.

While many scholars have illustrated the importance of political knowledge in shaping public opinion and vote choice, the measurement of political knowledge is still being refined. Office recognition questions are a common component of general political knowledge measures, and have appeared regularly in the American National Election Study time series. The 2008 ANES included redacted verbatim responses to the recognition questions, which allows us to determine the extent of "partial knowledge" about some public officials. Our coding of these responses reveals evidence of considerable "partial recognition," which is positively associated with other measures of political knowledge and with political behaviors associated with knowledge. These results paint a slightly more flattering portrait of American political knowledge than previous estimates have shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]