ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the knowledge behind the voting decisions. Campaigns for federal offices have developed into multimillion-dollar efforts by politicians to communicate with voters. The most common approach to understanding a person's political knowledge is to ask them a series of political questions that tap into an individual's long-term memory. Moving beyond the technicality of operationalizing political knowledge, many of the questions of import in testing one's political knowledge deal with constitutional provisions, political names, and political titles. Theoretically, scholars care about the public's level of political knowledge because democratic representation relies on accurate public input. If voters cannot determine which candidate best represents them in all the local, state, and federal elections in which they participate, then the foundation of democratic representation is shattered. The democratic citizen is expected to be well-informed about political affairs.
