69: The percentage of people who know that Newt Gingrich used to be Speaker of the House. This is the only sizable score in a new Pew Research poll which indicates that sizable chunks of the public are unaware of basic facts about the current pool of GOP candidates or the general progress of the Republican primary. In a poll conducted Jan. 4-8 among 1,507 adults and 1,165 registered voters, 47 percent were unable to identify Massachusetts as the state where Mitt Romney served as governor, 56 percent were unfamiliar with Ron Paul‘s stance on Afghanistan, and only 45 percent of voters identified South Carolina as next in line on the primary calendar. Of course, answers for this survey varied by age, education and gender. Voters under the age of 30 were less likely to answer questions about Gingrich or Romney correctly, but matched older voters with their knowledge of Paul’s support for ending the war in Afghanistan.
