Student knowledge of politics

I am teaching Intro to Comparative Politics during this summer session, and yesterday for fun I gave my students a quiz on politics, which they could do anonymously. I just wanted to see how much people knew. Here are the results. N=19

How is the number of electoral votes for each state determined?

Correct: 32%

Who is the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives?

Correct: 5% (one person!)

Identify NC’s two senators:

Dole: 21%
Burr: 16%

Two people correctly identified both of them

Identify the Governor of NC:

Correct: 58%

Identify the Mayor of Charlotte:

Correct 47%

These numbers are quite low, of course, though I don’t know offhand how they compare to national surveys. It does help to underline a point I made in class, which was that it just seems so odd that the U.S. utilizes a system for electing its president that very few people understand. Even more odd is that people realize that they don’t understand it, yet still don’t care.