Voter error or statistician error

The claim by some economists that voters do not understand the federal budget. Here is Thoma:

The fact is, most people believe they pay far more to the government than they receive in return. To a surprising degree, Americans underestimate their actual consumption of government services and tax breaks. For example, 43% of people receiving unemployment insurance deny they receive government benefits, and 40% of those on Medicare answer the same way: They do not use government programs.

Pollsters are generally slow witted statisticians. A voter in California is not the same voter as in Nebraska due to mal-representation in the Senate. The problem is with the statistician, like Gallop and the rest. They need a two axis representation, the level of representation in Congress vs preferences, or else pollsters should break up results accoring to state size, in terns of COngressional districts.