In politics we like to speak of “name ID,” meaning what percentage of voters are familiar with a particular candidate. Often this comes up in reference to incumbents and unusually strong candidates who are said to have “100% name ID.” But the latest survey out of Pew Research should give us pause before we bandy about the phrase again:
If the unimonikered Arnold and Hillary can’t muster any more than 93% name identification upon the prompting
Now I would like to ask you about some people who have been in the news recently. Not everyone will have heard of them. If you don’t know who someone is, just tell me and I’ll move on. Can you tell me who [INSERT ITEM; RANDOMIZE] is?
then who possibly can? Maybe the president?
Maybe not: An Angus Reid survey from last September suggests that 1% of Americans haven’t the foggiest idea who George W. Bush might be. Of course, that poll also showed just 1% of respondents didn’t know who Hillary Clinton was either.
Of course, the numbers don’t mean that much. If they did, dispirited Republican strategists would be reading this survey and wishing it was already 2011, when Peyton Manning will be thirty-five years old.
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