Iraq dominated the headlines throughout the fall of 2002 and into the winter of 2003. Public opinion on the wisdom of war, however, stabilized relatively early and slightly in favor of war. Gallup found that from August 2002 through early March 2003 the share of Americans favoring war hovered in a relatively narrow range between a low of 52 percent and a high of 59 percent. By contrast, the share of the public opposed to war fluctuated between 35 percent and 43 percent.

Looks like Americans are even more happy with murdering people if its done by a puppet.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rally-round-the-flag-opinion-in-the-united-states-before-and-after-the-iraq-war/

  • aaro [they/them, she/her]
    ·
    1 year ago

    The CNN poll surveyed 1,003 adults via text message, and only surveyed adults with mobile phones. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.

    • lemmyseizethemeans@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Ok cool. 1000 people who will answer a text message from unknown. Would you? Again, I know literally zero people who support Israel in this conflict. Got friends up and down the age spectrum, in and outside of the states.

      So my poll says 100% of everyone I know wants this shit to end. Facebook, Twitter, insta, all on the same page here.

      Somehow American polls always seem to be, ahem, skewed.

      Look at those 538 predictions based on 'polling data' on the last several elections.

      • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        So my poll says 100% of everyone I know wants this shit to end. Facebook, Twitter, insta, all on the same page here.

        This is not how statistics works

          • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Maybe not but I don't see anything in their brief methodology section quoted above to indicate it wasn't a random sample of mobile phone users. What makes you think it wasn't?

            • Nagarjuna [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              A random sample of mobile phone users isn't a random sample, because you're only going to get the people who answer texts from strangers.

              It's called "non-response bias" and it's a huge part of the reason political polling doesn't work. It's strong enough to render almost any sample from a phone survey non-representative.

              • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Yeah I understand that there's a difference between the sampled population and the actual population of interest, but you can't discount the results of on account of that unless you can meaningfully show a non-zero covariance between the response variable and likelihood of non-response.

                By all means it's a caveat but it doesn't make these results entirely non-informative.

                In any case I cited iid conditions to explain why asking all their friends is certain to produce a useless estimate of the population proportion.

                • Nagarjuna [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  They know that asking their friends is useless. They were trying to make a point about sampling bias.

                        • lemmyseizethemeans@lemmygrad.ml
                          ·
                          1 year ago

                          Look at it this way. When the US wants to prosecute a suspect in federal court, where do they generally hold the trials? In the whitest, most affluent part of Virginia. So the jury, while random, is still taken from a specific pool of people who lean a certain way politically.

                          If you think polling data isn't politically motivated and influenced by sample location, age, and the way the questions are formulated, you're deceiving yourself. What's that saying? There are small lies, big lies, and statistics.