PoliBlog ™: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts

Here’s more on the aforementioned book survey, this time looking at partisanship and reading: Book Chief: Conservatives Want Slogans

The AP-Ipsos poll found 22 percent of liberals and moderates said they had not read a book within the past year, compared with 34 percent of conservatives.

Among those who had read at least one book, liberals typically read nine books in the year, with half reading more than that and half less. Conservatives typically read eight, moderates five.

By slightly wider margins, Democrats tended to read more books than Republicans and independents. There were no differences by political party in the percentage of those who said they had not read at least one book.

A couple of things strike me. First is that by conflating “moderates” with “liberals” creates a false category to use in comparing to “conservatives”–so what that first paragraph above tells us is hard to say, unless one is simply trying to make a political point. The analysis is especially sloppy, because in the next paragraph we switch from liberal, moderate, conservative to Democrat, Republican and Independent—are these categories to be construed as the same or as different?

Ultimately, I am not surprised by the notion that liberals would, in the aggregate, read more books than conservatives, as liberals tend to be more educated, in the aggregate, than conservatives. Indeed, I would tend to think that the operative issue here is not partisan/ideological self-identification, but rather one of educational attainment. I suspect that if one compared libs and cons of similar educational level, that the reading issue would end up being similar regardless of ideology.

The funny thing about the story as written is that there is an inherent assumption that we are somehow talking about political books here, and the first couple of paragraphs are focused on the notion that conservatives read less because they have simpler ideas about politics:

Liberals read more books than conservatives. The head of the book publishing industry’s trade group says she knows why—and there’s little flattering about conservative readers in her explanation.

“The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: ‘No, don’t raise my taxes, no new taxes,’” Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, said in a recent interview. “It’s pretty hard to write a book saying, ‘No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes’ on every page.”

Schroeder, who as a Colorado Democrat was once one of Congress’ most liberal House members, was responding to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that found people who consider themselves liberals are more prodigious book readers than conservatives.

She said liberals tend to be policy wonks who “can’t say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion.”

Egads, it’s Karl Rove’s fault! And really, Schroeder isn’t exactly an unbiased observer and to lead the story with her “assessment” isn’t exactly a study in good reporting.

Another major problem overall is that the poll is about reading in general, not reading of political books. Indeed, surely we are talking predominantly about fiction., not political manifestos.

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