The less people know about Ukraine, the more willing they are to go to war

Where’s Ukraine? Each dot depicts the location where a U.S. survey respondent situated Ukraine; the dots are colored based on how far removed they are from the actual country, with the most accurate responses in red and the least accurate ones in blue. (Data: Survey Sampling International; Figure: Thomas Zeitzoff/The Monkey Cage)

Surveys that show a stunning ignorance among the American electorate – on politics, on current events, on history – have become so common online and on TV that nothing’s shocking anymore to the knowledgeable sector of the population.

But I came across a survey from a year ago that is both disturbing and chilling in that it essentially shows how foreign policy officials could manipulate that ignorance to their advantage.

A poll was taken that found this: The less people know about where Ukraine is located on a map, the more they want the U.S. to intervene militarily.
Yes, those who know the least about the situation are most willing to send in the troops to … well, wherever that place is.

This poll from late March 2014 was a little different than a typical survey. Beyond asking questions it asked respondents to pinpoint on a world map where Ukraine is located.
In the process, the survey on Ukraine revealed a well-worn shortcoming in one common question by pollsters. Although two-thirds of Americans in polls had reported following the situation at least “somewhat closely,” most Americans actually knew very little about events on the ground — or even where the ground is.

How far off were they? Take a good look at the map above (a larger version is here), published by The Washington Post, and notice that several people thought that Alaska is Ukraine. Others put their pin in the map in Iowa and other spots in Middle America. Then there's the uninformed who missed the mark by several thousand miles, pointing to locations in Australia, southern Africa and South America not far from Antarctica.
The three Ivy League professors who created this poll, relying on respondents to click on the map through an online link, found that only about one in six (16 percent) of Americans correctly located Ukraine, clicking somewhere within its borders.
Most thought that Ukraine was located somewhere in Europe or Asia, but half of the responses were, at a minimum, 1,800 miles off — roughly the distance from Chicago to Los Angeles.
And what's with all those dots in northern Canada and Greenland?

I would point out that independents (29 percent correct) who supposedly don’t follow politics and foreign affairs were twice as smart on this little quiz than both Democrats (14 percent correct) and Republicans (15 percent  correct). 

In a guest column for the Post’s “Monkey Cage” blog, the trio of professors co-wrote this:

“Does it really matter whether Americans can put Ukraine on a map? Previous research would suggest yes: Information, or the absence thereof, can influence Americans’ attitudes about the kind of policies they want their government to carry out and the ability of elites to shape that agenda.

I would also add that, since the weeks leading up this survey, the Russians invaded a country, took control of a peninsula, and their rebel forces shot down a commercial airliner, killing everyone on board. But few Americans know about or care about what’s going on in Ukraine.
Sadly, members of U.S. military households were no more likely to correctly locate Ukraine (16.1 percent correct) than members of non-military households (16 percent correct).

And one more thing: Even 77 percent of college graduates failed what was obviously became a guessing game by the respondents. In fact, the proportion of college grads who could correctly identify Ukraine was only slightly higher than the proportion of Americans who told Pew Research that President Obama was Muslim in August 2010.