There was an opt-in survey in from YouGov & The Economist that seemed to show a fifth of young Americans denied the Holocaust. The Economist ran a piece on it.

Well, Pew Research did a random sampling and found completely different and far less worrying results.

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  • mar_k [he/him]
    ·
    8 months ago

    Those questions will get SIGNIFICANT positive responses basically every time.

    kind of significant, but in polling with good methodology it's rarely crazy, depending on how funny people think the answer is (i.e. there's a study from 2013 saying "4% of americans believe lizards run the country". not sure how it was run). also, the proportion of people giving an absurd answer to an absurd question isn't necessarily indicative the same proportion lie on other questions. like, you can be honest on serious stuff but choose to troll when you see a question about eating tide pods

    the graph above the submarine graph has only up to 1% of people from all ages lying in a solid, random-sampling based poll. it's shitty opt-in paid surveys that are the problem, people are recruited via ads or social media and rush through without reading the questions, which is exactly where the 20% holocaust denial figure comes from