If the studying only affects your vote and not your other behavior, then why not put it off until the last moment before the election, when the most information is available?
But it doesn't only affect your vote. Democracy lives from people discussing public events. Reducing democracy to voting seems like cargo cult democracy.
why not put it off until the last moment before the election, when the most information is available?
There very little real information that's made available right before an election. If you want to judge whether to elect party A or party B, you have to look at the track record of those parties.
Judging politicans by the promise that they make the month before election instead of judging them for the track record that they have gives all the wrong incentives.
It's a better strategy than never getting informed about politics at all, though.
I have finally gotten the survey to a point where I'm pretty happy with it. I have no big changes I want to make this year. But as is the tradition, please take a week to discuss what minor changes you want to the survey (within the limits of what Google Docs and finite time can do) and I will try to comply. In particular, we can continue the tradition that any question you request can be added to the Extra Credit section unless it's illegal or horribly offensive.
You can find last year's survey results here and you can find the very preliminary version of this year's survey (so far exactly the same as last year's) here.
EDIT: I don't particularly like the IQ test or the Big Five test used last year. If you have any better replacements for either, tell me and I'll put them in.
EDIT2: CFAR, you added seven questions last year. Let me know what you want to do with those this year. Keep them? Remove them? Replace them?