HORSEBACK JUDGMENTS AND THE “MISINFORMATION POLL” (COMMENT).

HORSEBACK JUDGMENTS AND THE “MISINFORMATION POLL” (COMMENT). Dick Weisfelder and Nick have commented on my post of the 14th, and in thinking about their comments, I have come to the view that I missed an important issue. I think that a lot of voters don’t form their judgments on the basis of the kinds of narrow propositions and the particularized analytical framework that the “Misinformation Poll” thinks are important. (I am calling the poll I linked to on the 14th the “Misinformation Poll.”) Must voters think the way experts do? Nick and Dick Weisfelder are right to point out that unemployment is a key variable for most people in defining a recession. I submit that this kind of horseback judgment is valid. Judging the state of the economy on the basis of unemployment rates and worrying stories on financial subjects is a plausible way of looking at the economy. The Department of Commerce (and I would add the official committee at the National Bureau of Economics—see here) may have specified a starting date and an end date for the recession, but voters who are looking at unemployment or even at published worries about the economy, may not pay attention to that. I think it’s misleading to complain that they are misinformed. Can voters reach useful conclusions without going through the analysis that experts do—or that one group of experts does? I think they can and do.