If you find polling interesting or frustrating (or both!) this is the episode for you!
U-Mass Amherst pollster and Associate Professor Alex Theodoridis is on the pod to talk about challenges facing modern polling and how to properly conduct and present survey results given the impacts on mass behavior of hyperpartisanship, which you should think of as partisanship, but on steroids.
In addition to the above conversation I want to make damn sure you see Alex’s data drop from their latest poll, which quite clearly illustrates the effect propaganda is having on rank and file Republicans (and ONLY on them) in regards to mainstreaming the very dangerous Great Replacement Theory. Right wing media has been working hard to lay down the antecedents to the same type of dehumanizing “othering” perfected by Joseph Goebbels for the Nazis and folks, IT’S WORKING.
What you are looking at is data being properly reported out to account for the reality that political survey data must now be analyzed broken down by party, with each party’s independent “leaners” added to the pool of admitted partisans. You see “All respondents” which is the collective responses from everyone surveyed, followed by the responses by party group.
The poll question, “Do some elected officials want to increase immigration to bring in obedient voters to vote for them,” is derived from a narrative increasingly common on top-grossing Fox News shows such as Tucker Carlson’s show.
The first graph, subtitled “all respondents” shows the collective opinion of all people surveyed and finds 37% of all respondents agree, or strongly agree, with the statement.
It is important to note that Alex and team, quite shrewdly in my estimate, left their question free of a partisan “nudge.” There is nothing in the survey question that provides a partisan “clue” as to which party is for, or against, the viewpoint because partisan cues are so powerful I once used an experimental survey design to demonstrate I could move support for cap & trade by 40 points among Republican respondents simply by telling respondents Republicans proposed the policy!
Thus, this pool of respondents were given NO HINT of the “proper” partisan position. This is why the data reported is especially notable because as we look at the responses broken down by party, nearly half of Republicans and their leaners STRONLY AGREE with the statement. The best point of comparison is the “pure” independent pool (no leaners) where just 21% of respondents strongly agree.
Two main takeaways here, folks. One, Great Replacement Theory is now a mainstream, near majority, attitude among rank and file Republican voters That’s REALLY bad because as we’re already seeing that when you’ve been brainwashed into thinking your facing an existential race crisis, you do crazy shit like armed insurrections and ordering drive bys on Democrats.
But its also important because it quite clearly quantifies what I will call the GOP’s propaganda effect. It is real, it is measurable, and it is coming for democracy.
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