According to the National Poll on Children’s Health–only 11 percent of voters feel as though they know a lot about stem cell research, says University of Michigan Health Service.

The silver lining? Data suggests that voters WANT to know about stem cell research, but they just don’t know much yet. Plus, the more voters know about stem cells, the more they want it: 85% of respondents who knew a lot about stem cells support the research, compared to 25% of those who do not know much.

Of course, this data could be biased in the sense that those who learn about stem cell research are already those who support it–thus why they learn more about it in the first place. Nothing in this data suggests that knowledge alone influences voting patterns.

In this poll, there’s bad news for federalists though–72% of those surveyed say they would prefer national legislation to state law.

These facts are relevant for the upcoming stem cell research vote in Michigan (Prop. 2) where that state will decide whether they will allow embryonic stem cell research. Half of the battle it would appear is general education on stem cell research, not over the specifics of the issue itself.

Summer Johnson, PhD