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Edited at 2014-11-03 20:40:30

At 11/3/14 07:28 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote:

At 11/3/14 07:14 PM, Feoric wrote:

At 11/3/14 12:30 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote: oh god why?! you really want the inbred hicks of the Bible Belt voting? with the Jesus Saves! and the MUH GUNS AND PICKUP TRUCK!

Like I keep saying, these people already vote.

but do we really need more of these people voting? I think not.

As far as I know there have been no public, published studies comparing the intelligence of voters vs. non-voters in terms of intelligence anywhere. The closest we have is something like this, which links IQ to wealth. However, there has been heavy criticism of their method and conclusions.

It would follow that the highest IQ countries with elected governments also have the most well run countries, but I would challenge you to reach that conclusion when comparing the top 25 countries by IQ to each other (according to the above study). Finland is on the bottom of this group and Hong Kong is at the top, so let's compare them.

GDP per capita: Hong Kong ($37,955), Finland ($49,055)
Average Life Expectancy: Hong Kong (83.48), Finland (80.63)
Education Ranking Hong Kong (3), Finland (1)

I could go on with other stats where effective governments can effect the outcome, but the result would not be any more clear.

The only practical way I could think of doing that would be to survey a certain amount of randomly selected voters from whatever country you are surveying and give them all an IQ test, Even that has problems associated with it.

Since people can't point to surveys or graphs, I would imagine that people just make judgments based on their own experiences and biases. If you like what is being done by elected officials right now, you probably believe that voters are a little smarter. If you don't like what is being done by elected officials, you probably think they're a little dumber.

In general, I suspect that the average voter isn't all that different from the average citizen. Even in the US, where voter turnout is unusually low, a fairly large percent of the registered voters turn out anyway, so I imagine their average IQ is fairly close to the national average.

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At 11/3/14 07:28 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote:

At 11/3/14 07:14 PM, Feoric wrote:

At 11/3/14 12:30 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote: oh god why?! you really want the inbred hicks of the Bible Belt voting? with the Jesus Saves! and the MUH GUNS AND PICKUP TRUCK!

Like I keep saying, these people already vote.

but do we really need more of these people voting? I think not.

As far as I know there have been no public, published studies comparing the intelligence of voters vs. non-voters in terms of intelligence anywhere. The closest we have is something like this, which links IQ to wealth. However, there has been heavy criticism of their method and conclusions.

It would follow that the highest IQ countries with elected governments also have the most well run countries, but I would challenge you to reach that conclusion when comparing the top 25 countries by IQ to each other (according to the above study). Finland is on the bottom of this group and Hong Kong is at the top, so let's compare them.

GDP per capita: Hong Kong ($37,955), Finland ($49,055)
Average Life Expectancy: Hong Kong (83.48), Finland (80.63)
Education Ranking Hong Kong (3), Finland (1)

I could go on with other stats where effective governments can effect the outcome, but the result would not be any more clear. Finland and Hong Kong are both nice countries to live in and they both seem to have fairly effective governments.

The only practical way I could think of doing that would be to survey a certain amount of randomly selected voters from whatever country you are surveying and give them all an IQ test, Even that has problems associated with it.

Since people can't point to surveys or graphs, I would imagine that people just make judgments based on their own experiences and biases. If you like what is being done by elected officials right now, you probably believe that voters are a little smarter. If you don't like what is being done by elected officials, you probably think they're a little dumber.

In general, I suspect that the average voter isn't all that different from the average citizen. Even in the US, where voter turnout is unusually low, a fairly large percent of the registered voters turn out anyway, so I imagine their average IQ is fairly close to the national average.