1 in 5 don’t know who the leader of the Conservatives is

Another piece of evidence for the Olympic women’s hockey theory of politics, aka the public pays far less attention to politics than most political activists realise:

Almost 20 per cent of people in Britain do not know that Theresa May is the leader of the Conservative Party. [The Independent]

Another one to add to the list of examples which includes the Conservative Party’s general election slogan, the Liberal Democrat position on Brexit, knowledge of Tim Farron and the curious voter from Clacton. Not to mention what the public really thinks filibustering is.

Nor is this new, as the previous experiences of the government in Wales and the 2005 Conservative Party general election campaign illustrate too.

As Walter Lippmann put it, in a democracy:

The public will arrive in the middle of the third act and leave before the last curtain, staying just long enough perhaps to decide who is the hero and who is the villain of the piece.

Or as Joseph Napolitan put it:

Never underestimate the intelligence of the voters, nor overestimate the amount of knowledge at their disposal.