• came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    171·
    2 days ago

    I am saying the samples aren’t random. I am saying the surveys are not even half-decent.

    I am saying the system is compromised purposely to serve cultural hegemony.

    Citations Needed routinely talks about the phenomenon of using shitty polling to get a desired result for the purpose of convincing leftists that our ideas and values are uncommon and unpopular while giving cover to politicians and fascists to warehouse minorities in prisons and do imperialism.

    • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      I always put it like this.

      In my daily life, 90% of the time when I talk with people they, in general, agree with my politics. And this includes supposedly controversial opinions like Luigi did nothing inherently wrong. The other 10% are split into two categories, 8% of it are other leftists who disagree on multiple aspects of my particular interpretation of leftism and the other 2% are hard-core conservatives who often still agree with my diagnostics, but not my cure. Now, maybe you could argue that I am in a cloistered environment, but the district I’ve lived in has been a purple swing district for the last 4 election cycles. If anything, other places are more viewpoint cloistered.

      However, if you were to consult pollsters, you would find that my ideas are wildly unpopular and supposedly ‘extreme and radical’. Now, they would argue this is revealed preference, but I argue that most people don’t like discussing the actual particulars of their beliefs over the phone to strangers. Not only that, but surveys are pretty crap at revealing what people actually believe in.