Twenty-nine percent of non-voters who supported Biden in 2020 said U.S. support for the genocide was the top reason they sat the 2024 election, according to a survey by YouGov.
Twenty-nine percent of non-voters who supported Biden in 2020 said U.S. support for the genocide was the top reason they sat the 2024 election, according to a survey by YouGov.
It’s doubtable this poll has uncovered something that countless other post-election polls have missed.
It’s more likely that the pollster is biased. This is the first sentence of About section of the pollster’s website: “Palestinians, like all people, are entitled to live in freedom and with their human rights respected. Yet, for too long, the US government has funded and enabled Israel’s denial of Palestinian human rights.”
Yes, it does smell of bias when we’re talking about statistics and polling. Why would you even mention all that in such a story? It should be a dry, here’s the facts kinda story.
“We believe $X and here’s the polling to prove it.”
The problem with that is that the actual polling questions did not indicate any such bias nor did they try to ask leading questions in the way that you’re implying.
News coverage always has a political viewpoint to express (including the “”“centrist”“” slop that often gets peddaled as “unbiased”), and so yeah, you’ll find such ““bias”” as maybe we shouldn’t be engaging in a horrific genocide from progressive news outlets. But the polling questions were pretty direct and clear in a non-leading way.
I dug into the survey and it appears they intentionally skewed the results by the word choice and order of the questions.
For example: “5. Do you [favor or oppose] the Biden administration approving taxpayer-funded weapons and other military support to Israel, even if the U.S. government has no control over whether the Israeli military uses those weapons on innocent civilians in Gaza, or are you undecided?”
The wording in that question will predispose a respondent to view the Biden administration negatively, even if that wasn’t the main reason that a respondent chose not to vote.
Worse, they asked that question before they asked about sitting out the election, predisposing the respondent to view that topic as more significant in their decision to sit out the election.
If the purpose of a poll was to figure out the reason for not voting, this is not a scientific way to do it. It predictably would skew results as it appears to have done.
It’s doubtable this poll has uncovered something that countless other post-election polls have missed.
It’s more likely that the pollster is biased. This is the first sentence of About section of the pollster’s website: “Palestinians, like all people, are entitled to live in freedom and with their human rights respected. Yet, for too long, the US government has funded and enabled Israel’s denial of Palestinian human rights.”
Imagine thinking that Palestinians being human beings is indicative of a bias. Yikes…
Yes, it does smell of bias when we’re talking about statistics and polling. Why would you even mention all that in such a story? It should be a dry, here’s the facts kinda story.
“We believe $X and here’s the polling to prove it.”
The problem with that is that the actual polling questions did not indicate any such bias nor did they try to ask leading questions in the way that you’re implying.
News coverage always has a political viewpoint to express (including the “”“centrist”“” slop that often gets peddaled as “unbiased”), and so yeah, you’ll find such ““bias”” as maybe we shouldn’t be engaging in a horrific genocide from progressive news outlets. But the polling questions were pretty direct and clear in a non-leading way.
But other polls have found similar results?
I dug into the survey and it appears they intentionally skewed the results by the word choice and order of the questions.
For example: “5. Do you [favor or oppose] the Biden administration approving taxpayer-funded weapons and other military support to Israel, even if the U.S. government has no control over whether the Israeli military uses those weapons on innocent civilians in Gaza, or are you undecided?”
The wording in that question will predispose a respondent to view the Biden administration negatively, even if that wasn’t the main reason that a respondent chose not to vote.
Worse, they asked that question before they asked about sitting out the election, predisposing the respondent to view that topic as more significant in their decision to sit out the election.
If the purpose of a poll was to figure out the reason for not voting, this is not a scientific way to do it. It predictably would skew results as it appears to have done.
Made me look too! Holy shit those are loaded questions.
Thanks for digging into it - yeah, that’s definitely not a neutral way to phrase things.