Just less than half of Oklahoma-educated likely voters fail citizenship test
A new SoonerPoll finds that only 58 percent of those who attended high school in Oklahoma could pass the citizenship test that is required of all naturalized Americans, 42 percent failed the test.
"I think the results expose the fundamental lack of understanding our society has for its basic freedoms," Bill Shapard, CEO of SoonerPoll, said. "The point we stop understanding those fundamental freedoms is the point that we lose them."
Respondents were asked ten randomly selected questions from the citizenship test. Questions in the survey were open-ended, which allowed the respondent being surveyed to provide the answer from memory.
The questions asked in the survey were:
- The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constitution. What are these words?
- What are two rights in the Declaration of Independence?
- What is the economic system in the United States?
- Who makes federal laws?
- Who is one of your state's U.S. Senators now?
- Name one war fought by the United States in the 1800s.
- We elect a U.S. Representative for how many years?
- Who is the commander in Chief of the military?
- Why does the flag have 13 stripes?
- Before he was President, Eisenhower was a general. What war was he in?
Oklahomans had the hardest time remembering two rights listed in the Declaration of Independence, but
two-thirds were able correctly to summarize the ideals of self-government found in the first three words of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.
Only one-third could accurately give the length of terms in the U.S. House, and a mere 42 percent correctly answered what kind of economic system exists in the U.S.
Oklahomans did better with historical question, almost all Oklahomans, 88 percent, knew why the U.S. flag has 13 stripes. A solid majority, 78 percent, could also accurately name one war of the Nineteenth Century and 73 percent knew which war General Dwight D. Eisenhower served as a general.
Most Oklahomans, 61 percent, knew that Congress makes federal laws and 59 percent could name at least one of Oklahoma's U.S. Senators.
Political label had little effect on the respondents score and there was little variation between the performance of Republicans and Democrats. Results were similar among most respondents regardless of partisan or ideological affinities or socio-economic status, in fact, higher income earners fared slightly worse.
Although most segments of society performed similarly to the overall results, further analysis reveals that some groups performed better than others. 77 percent of private school graduates passed, compared to only 57 percent of public school graduates. Of Native Americans surveyed 62 percent made a D or higher, compared to only 57 percent of Whites and 58 percent of Blacks.
SoonerPoll.com, Oklahoma's Public Opinion Pollster, was commissioned for this survey by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. The scientific study of 1,014 likely voters in Oklahoma who only attended high school in the state was conducted by SoonerPoll.com using live telephone interviewers between May 25 - June 24, 2010. The study has a margin of error of ±3 percent.
