The Pew Research Center has a very quick poll that I would love it if some of my readers took and reported back their results.

Political Quiz.

Read the rest of my blog post after you’ve taken the quiz.

Being the news junkie that I am, I scored a perfect 12 out of 12. However, only 2% of the people taking the quiz did that well. Looking at the results, there were things that weren’t too surprising. The older you were and the more education you had the better you tended to do.

So, let’s look at the overall scores. 75% of the people taking the quiz knew that the Democrats have a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. I would expect most people to know that. You don’t have to be all that involved to know that, but 25% didn’t know it?

65% of the people knew that Sotomayor is the newest justice on the Supreme Court. Given the amount of news her nomination garnered, that isn’t surprising. On the other hand, I’m less surprised that 35% of the people didn’t know she was the newest justice.

I do find it surprising that 61% of the people taking the poll were aware that health care spending per person in the U.S. is higher than in most major European nations. Given how vocal the opposition is to fixing our health care system, I was suspecting that fewer people would be aware of this. I was also interested to note that this is the one question where women outscored men. Is this a statistical fluke, or is there some reason women are more aware of health care costs than men?

56% of the people knew that the ‘public option’ deals with health care; a little higher than I expected but not too surprising. 53% knew approximately what the national unemployment rate is. I would have thought more people would be aware of the unemployment rate.

42% knew that Iran does not share a border with Israel. Given the nature of the news coverage, I can see how some people might mistakenly think that Israel and Iran share a border, but 58% of the people wrongly believe they do? That is a little surprising.

40% of the people know who Glenn Beck is. That seems about right. Of that, I suspect that many who do know who he is dislike him. He really isn’t as important, except to a small noisy bunch as people tend to make him out to be.

Only a third of the survey participants know approximately where the Dow Industrial Average is, or who the current chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve is. Disappointing, but not too surprising.

I was disappointed, but not too surprised that less than a third of the survey respondents knew the number of troops in Afghanistan and less than a quarter knew what ‘cap and trade’ was or who the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, who had been in the news a lot about passing the health care reform bill out of committee.

So, how did you do? Which ones did you miss? What are your thoughts about the survey? What are your thoughts about how informed Americans are or how we can get them to be more informed?