5 Myths About Our Ballot-Box Behavior

4. Political disagreement is all about values.

After admitting that the average voter has a poor command of the facts, we typically minimize the danger. "Yes, the electorate is shockingly ill-informed," people say. "But it doesn't make any difference because the big debates are about values, not nitty-gritty facts."

Values matter a great deal, but facts do, too. On almost every major issue, both sides have a different story, not just a different spin. For example, a 2004 Harris poll on the Iraq war found that supporters of President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry had radically different beliefs about Saddam Hussein's regime. A striking 58 percent of Bush partisans thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded it in 2003, as opposed to just 16 percent of Kerry backers.

Factual beliefs matter even for policies that verge on the sacred. In 1996, Gallup ran a survey about the minimum wage. Some respondents were asked if they favored an increase. More than 80 percent said yes. The rest were asked instead if they would favor raising the minimum wage "if it resulted in fewer jobs available to low-paid workers." Support plummeted to 40 percent. You might think that the minimum wage is too much a part of our civic religion to depend upon mere facts, but you'd be wrong.

5. Voters want serious change.

Pundits love telling us that voters are "fed up" with politics as usual. Candidates follow suit, insisting that -- unlike their competition -- they're really listening to the American people.

Nonsense. Public opinion data strongly confirm that the status quo is popular. All the big components of the federal budget enjoy broad support. When asked whether government should do less of something, more of something or stick with the status quo, the average American almost always sticks with what he has.

The only iron-clad counter-example is foreign aid. Most Americans have wanted less of it for decades. But since foreign aid is about 1 percent of the federal budget, we can safely call it the exception that proves the rule.

Surely Americans want serious change on Iraq, you say? True, about 60 percent of Americans now say that the war was a mistake. But given the available options, voters are still getting what they want. If Iraq were a stable and enthusiastic ally, we'd like to leave today, but that's not on the menu. Most Americans now favor a timetable for withdrawal, but how many would want to stick to a schedule if that meant handing Iraq over to radical Islamists? In a few years, the majority may be ready for "peace at any price" -- but not yet.

As the humorist Josh Billings once observed, "The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so."

bcaplan@gmu.edu

Bryan Caplan, an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, is the author of "The Myth of the Rational Voter:

Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies."