Some Cold Water

Dumped on mah haid. In the form of a survey which shows that 31% of the recent respondents to a Pew survey could not name the Vice President of the United States. Many people are not into politics at all. It's possible that those are the people who don't vote, but perhaps not, and this raises all sorts of awkward questions about which arguments work to make people vote a certain way.

The same survey pointed out something that has been found earlier, too: The political comedy shows tend to be watched by the people who are the best informed. Note that this doesn't necessarily imply causality, but it's interesting nevertheless.