5% of Americans own a car but not a drivers licence.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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WTH, Americans think that 30% of the country lives in NYC?
They think 21% are transgender too.... A lot of propaganda has gone through these people.
“Transvestigation” is fucking insane and there are a lot of people who are convinced that many celebrities are secretly trans.
I think it mostly started with disgusting conspiracies about Michelle Obama (they literally believe that Sasha and Malia were kidnapped, even have specific missing children they think they are). Alex Jones and his ilk think Michelle was born Michael.
This was a thing that developed I think late in his presidency, then it expanded to several other figures. My favorite is Donald Glover as a trans man - I’ll gladly welcome Childish Gambino into my community.
It’s a serious “Q anon” type mentally ill worldview.
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By the looks of it, it's 30% to NYC, 30% to Texas, and 30% to California. So 10% for literally everywhere else in the US. That's gotta be close, right?
I'd totally get that for polling people outside of North America. It's just shocking to see it from people who have probably been to NYC or at least another major metro area -- which would instantly falsify a 30% number for NYC.
Why assume most Americans have seen NYC or other major cities though? Most of us don't ever make enough money to travel this country's hard-to-imagine-how-big-it-actually-is vastness, or even enough to leave our hometowns for longer than a couple days before financial woes start nipping at the mind, if not worse.
This is not to say I think it's a reasonable conclusion to think 30% of our population is in any of these three areas of course. That is silly and requires a very skewed view of things (which, lucky us, is easily provided by any number of increasingly 'official' seeming news sources that really just deal in intentional fear mongering and reductionism). Most people tend to believe whatever is put before them, and we have a system that has been explicitly set up to present false images of reality to US citizens. Propaganda to keep the propaganda machine running, right? As unreasonable as it is, it also makes sense that people could be duped into believing it because this system so many of us are stick within is hellbent on ensuring that we are intentionally conditioned out of the ability to know better by adulthood. It doesn't work on everyone, but it works well enough that's it's perpetuation is currently one of the highest yielding economies this foolish country has to offer.
The line of thought that seems obvious and reasonable to you and me has been intentionally beaten out of countless people here before they even had a chance to understand how to think rationally. I don't know how to fix these things. It is just so obvious to me from this inside vantage that the stupidity of our country is one that has been intentionally manufactured and amplified at the expense of us, the actual people the same system depends on and revolves around keeping ignorant.
Sorry for the rant. Many Americans are dumb. Most of the ones that are never had a real option to be anything else because of how fucked things are here. That's not intended as an excuse, but as an attempt at an explanation tbc
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It's shocking how bad normal people are with basic math
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Only 3% Atheists... And all of them are here on Lemmy.
I know Americans love Jesus a whole lot but really only 4%. That just seems crazy low
I think it's because people are still uncomfortable answering "atheist" on questionnaires and polls. It's easier to say "no religious affiliation", and most people are probably agnostic instead of atheist anyway.
You're right. This survey lists 29 % of Americans as "Religiously unaffiliated". Of those 5 % are Atheists, 6 % Agnostic and 19 % "Nothing in particular".
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These estimates are bananas, this only shows the systematic stupidification of Americans is highly successful.
It's called propaganda! Relentless, unceasing bombardment of right wing brain rotting propaganda.
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Americans believe 20% of the people have an income of over 1 million dollars and ~~20%~~ 30%of Americans live in NYC. Am I reading this chart wrong?
?????
NYC has a population of what? 10 million people? So they think there's only 30 million people living in the states?
NYC stood out to me too. We think 3 out of 10 people in the US live in NYC??? Lmaooo. I think a big part of it is that we just generally don't comprehend statistics because some of these numbers are wild.
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Holy, holy, holy...they actually thought 21% of people are transgender? 1 in 5?? The only thing this proves is the polled Americans are stupid AF. 🙄🙄🙄
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88% own a car, but only 82% have a license? Interesting
You don't need a license to own a car. You need one to drive it.
You need one to drive it
legally
There are people, especially in the rural south, who own and operate a vehicle without a license.
Sometimes even congressmen
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It seems the real thing this survey shows is most Americans are fucking dumb.
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I unfortunately have to downvote this as this is far too interesting to be mildly interesting.
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They think almost 25% of people are trans?? Jesus fucking christ
It explains so much when it's played up so heavily in talk shows, despite the reality always having been very minor. Honestly I didn't realize me being gay was that much of a minority either. I kind of wish ADHD had been one in the list; if I remember the reality is like no more than 3-5% of the population but people assume it's over diagnosed as hell and like...not really. Maybe when there was the initial "rush" of sorts for parents during the 90's because of it seeming to help "unruly" kids, often just meaning imaginative or creative. In my case my parents didn't even know until my kindergarten teacher told them I should get evaluated, and yep.
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33% have a college degree yet only 3% are atheist. That's batshit crazy. I can't imagine having the critical thinking skills needed for a degree and not using those skills to figure out that god is a fairy tale.
Yes I know lots of educated people are religious - I had several christian professors when I was studying mathematics / computer science. That doesn't make it any less crazy to me.
What's not represented in the graph.. I think you'll find a large portion of agnostics and "cultural Christians". I.e. people who go to church because they're raised that way in their community expects it.
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3% Atheists is such a bullshit number. There is a famous Pew poll, where they asked people two questions side by side, "are you an atheist" and "do you believe in any god", and 4% answered no to the first one and something like 20% answered no to the second one.
I think "atheist" carries the connotations of being irreligeous, not just not believing in any gods. So some people may not believe in any gods, but maybe they do have some kind of spirituality, or believe in ghosts or something. Buddhism as a religion doesn't mandate God-belief, though some schools do interact with devas. I'm unsure if any other religions don't require gods to work, but even if they exist, I imagine they and Buddhists, despite not believing in any gods, will be very hesitant to describe themselves as "atheist."
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they estimated 21% of the population are trans, lol I wish 😂
If 21% of the population was trans, republicans ain't winning elections again.
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The 42% are democrats and 47% are republicans is the true surprise. That is a huge difference even though it might not seem like it.
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How incredible to see the effect of political messaging on citizen/voter perception. It is that the exaggerations, lies, and outrage marketing clearly have an outsized effect. I wouldn’t say the US population is dumb. But I would say the manipulation of perception is too much for the average person to do their own research and come up with unbiased facts.
***To those dismissing this based on inconsistencies between topics, you can’t make those comparisons. There is some blending of data in the methodology that is appropriate in order to look at the range. This is only about the gap between perception and reality, and a stack rank.
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Americans believe a single city (New York) represents 30% of the American population?
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Here's the methodology according to the YouGov website:
Methodology: This article includes findings from two U.S. News surveys conducted by YouGov on two nationally representative samples of 1,000 U.S. adult citizens interviewed online from January 14-20, 2022. The first survey included questions on groups involving race, education, income, family, gender, and sexuality, while the second survey included questions on religion, politics, and other miscellaneous groups. The samples were weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the 2018 American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as 2016 and 2020 Presidential votes (or non-votes). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. citizens. Real proportions were taken from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, YouGov’s internal poll results, and the results of other well-established polling firms. Most estimates were collected within the past three years; the oldest is from 2009. Because the real estimates presented cover a range of time periods, they may differ from actual population sizes at the time our survey was conducted.
Sample size of 1000 is absolutely nothing for so many detailed/granular questions. Let alone then weighing the few sub-groups etc.
People just have no idea what numbers mean. And, look at how education works here, who could blame them?
Reminder that a McDonald's new burger campaign failed because people thought a ⅓ lb burger was smaller than a ¼ lb burger.
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Imagine thinking 1 in 5 people are trans... Just... This has to be a math understanding issue, right??
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- 64% white
- 39% hispanic
- 41% black
- 29% asian
- 30% jewish
- 27% native americans
All the 230% of US population.
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Funny that more people own a car than have a driver's license.
So looking at that chart the average person thinks that (roughly), one in four people are native American, one in four people are Asian, two in five people are black as well as two in five people being Hispanic. Or to use the given percentages the average American thinks that 136% of Americans are non-white. I suppose that explains a lot of the "white genocide" hysteria.
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I wonder how much of MAGA knows the entire population of illegal immigrants is estimated at a WHOPPING 3% of our population.
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