Does it seem to help much at all with the political sphere? In US politicos seem to me to be pretty ignorant of some of the finer points, but that may be an age thing too.

Don't think it has any effect. Why would it?

Any effects of education are swamped by the differences in voting systems. Germany has Mixed-member proportional representation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr...), which leads to a multi-party system.

The US has some variation of first-past-the-post. Especially together with the primary system, this rewards people for pandering to the base.

Politicians will start being competent as soon as the populace giving them jobs values that trait enough.

That also includes keeping the loudly howling minorities for any given topic in check that raises hell whenever a person in public view seems to disagree with them, thereby teaching such people that lying and pretending is the best option.

And the population will reward more reasonable people, when that becomes a useful tactic in voting.

First-past-the-post basically forces you to vote for the idiot, or risk throwing away your vote.