They think 30% of the nation live in texas, another 30 in NY and another 30 in california?
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
89 points (97.8% liked)
QueerDefenseFront
751 readers
322 users here now
LGBTQ+ rights are under attack across the world.
This a Community dedicated to the discussion of how to protect, advocate for, and restore LGBTQ rights!
With the rampant increase of Anti LGBTQ+ hate crimes, speech and laws internationally, the LGBTQ community globally no longer feels safe.
We refuse to stand by while injustice against our community reigns.
Here we will organize, and discuss ways to make our voices heard!
Link to QDL Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Queerdefensefront/s/s1JGAmJK9d
Link to QDL Discord Server: https://discord.com/invite/ng7DZqP6pf
Community Rules:
- No Hate Speech
No Hate Speech allowed whatsoever. This is a O tolerance policy. This goes for any form of hate and/or bigotry regarding race, religion, or LGBTQ+ identities.
While we will have discussions on political issues dealing with hate and bigotry AGAINST the LGBTQ+ community, please keep your comments respectful of ail parties.
Be better than how your enemies treat you.
- Respect the trans community
Respect the people who belong here. If you're confused what that means, here's a minor primer:
No asking to date trans people or otherwise meet up with them. No treating being transgender as a mental illness or as being lesser in any way. No arguing with trans people about their identity. No arguing with trans people about their vulnerabilities, including anything related to sports, laws, etc. This includes anything else that the mod team deems disrespectful.
- Stay on topic!
Posts should be related to the defense, advocacy, and restoration of LGBTQ+ rights.
This Community is for news regarding, as well as the discussion of, anti LGBTQ+ laws, hate crimes, and propaganda.
- Bunnies are above the law
This isn't a rule but it shows you're paying attention to the rules. good for you!
Similar Communities:
c/Gaymers: !gaymers@lemmy.blahaj.zone
c/trans_guns: !trans_guns@Lemmy.blahaj.zone
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
They think 50% are democrats and 51% are republicans; 70% Christian, 30% Jewish, 27% muslim and 33% atheist...
They think 58% Christian, not 70%. 70% is the true number.
This is mostly an example of a kind of survey bias I'm having trouble finding the name for plus a counterintuitive effect of averaging.
For the bias, when people are asked to estimate a percentage, they tend to estimate by large fractions of the whole, like by quarters, fifths, or tenths. This means you'll see survey estimates closer to 50% than the real value, with the effect more pronounced for real values closer to 100% or 0%.
For the averaging phenomenon, when looking at the averaged responses across all questions of a survey, you can quite easily get a collection that wouldn't make sense as a set of responses for "the average" (that is, the typical) person. You can have 3 different responders who each think California, Texas, or Florida has more people than they actually do, and then when you average those responses it looks like all responders think all three of those states have more people than they do, even when no one response was biased that way.
With these two together, this survey makes the average (statistical mean) American look much less informed than the typical (statistical median) American.
... You didn't read the post.
Because at the end of it, they have a graph, with medians instead of means... and the same general pattern of significantly overestimating the size of minority groups and significantly underestimating majority groups is present.
Yeah, its less 'strong' overall when you look at medians instead of means, and some groups get pretty close to being estimated more in line with reality, but the same general pattern is still present.
So you could instead take this median based graph and order it by... gap between median estimated % and actual, and then do the same with averages, and compare and contrast that.
Like uh, heres a case study:
Mean estimated household income over $25k: 62%
Median household estimated income over $25k: 65%
Actual income over $25k: 82%
Not too much difference, just 3%, between the mean and the median there, compared to:
Mean estimated household income over $1M: 20%
Median estimated household income over $1M: 10%
Actual income over $1M: 0% *
- Where 0% just means it is less than 0.5%, (or however they are doing rounding to nearest whole %) not literally 0.000000%.
So thats a more susbstantial estimated mean - median difference, 10%.
Before blaming me for not reading the article, maybe read my whole comment? I listed 2 effects. Yes, mean versus median is one. The other is a cognitive bias related to how humans estimate percentages.
Medians showing the same effect but reduced is exactly what I would expect when you account for one of the two phenomena but not the other.
You still clearly did not read the whole post, otherwise you would not have used the mean-median difference as an example.
That's the more charitable intetpretation, by the way, the alternative is you did read it, knew it featured the median data points, and then acted as if it didn't, ie, intentionally misrepresented.
Also, what you're just asserting that round number bias is essentially uncontrolled for here? But you present 0 evidence of this.
That could be the case, but you have presented absolutely no evidence that that is the case.
These are fairly big survey/pollster people.
They probably know to account for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouGov
We don't know for certain though, because they do not extensively detail their methodologies in their post.
... but its... misleading to present the entire thing as being juat an artefact of not accounting for round number bias, or some other bias.
I'm an econometrician, it bugs me when people criticize statistics in invalid ways.
If you wanna wade into lies, damned lies, and statistics... arm yourself well, or, be a bit more humble.
As an econometrician, have you not heard of Kahneman and Tversky? That boggles my mind. Look up round number bias, and regression toward 50%, and maybe read Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.
I'd note that the numbers in here for "actual" are also a bit suspect for some categories.
For example the percentage bisexual - a study showed about 10% of american men and 20% of american women have had bisexual attractions - which would indicate a real number being somewhere in the 15% realm.
It can be misleading if the results are presented like total for any person who had bisexual attraction, like I would say this does.
I'm not sure why you think it would be 15%. You would need to account for cultural factors such as homophobic masculine culture likely making men lie. Especially with marginalized groups you would expect the true number to be higher than what any survey would say because the oppression of marginalized identities means fewer respondents would self identify. The real number is likely more than 20%.
I think its higher as well for the same reasons, just noting that even a single self-reported survey resulted in a number several times the "actual" shown here.
They're probably going with 'openly identify as'.
Or something much closer to that, than to 'has ever experienced some kind of non hetero attraction or had a consensual non hetero encounter'.
I do agree that it would be useful to explain the methodology a bit more in depth, they do say:
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.
So... yeah, you'd have to untangle all of that, all of those metholdogies, to know exactly what they are saying, exactly what they mean by various terms.
So... yeah, you'd have to untangle all of that, all of those metholdogies, to know exactly what they are saying, exactly what they mean by various terms.
Yup, which just makes it a pretty bad graphic for the things that aren't hard numbers, like income.
For what its worth I'm not the one who downvoted you.
But I mean... it covers a broad range of topics, and doesn't go into particular detail on any of them.
The point is to literally illustrate their general claim that Americans overestimate the predominance of many minority groups, and underestimate the predominance of majority groups.
It successfully achieves that.
If you wanted to go into more detail and focus into specific sub categories, that'd be a great idea!
But... they just didn't do that.
It successfully achieves that.
By being deceptive on a number of categories, which is the issue I have with this graphic.
It successfully presents a larger gap than reality, and further makes minority groups more of a minority. Which to me creates a whole new problem.
I don't particulary care about downvotes BTW so dont worry about it.
... I honestly wouldn't call this deceptive, at least not intentionally.
And... I'm a bi econometrician.
Its very true that the issue you bring up is a serious issue, that colloquial definitions are vague and amorphous and change based on many factors and it would be nice if they could be more precise and specific.
But... they don't explicitly define their methodological definition.
This is basically a fluffy blog post from a polling firm, not a published study.
That's not the same thing as being intentionally misleading.
Its being vague. Which isn't great.
But if you look at this and ... don't realize that they are just being vague and not precisely defining terms...
... and you just declare that your methodological definition is just, the correct one... and then are displeased that they don't say which def. they're using...
... that's a you problem, imo.
You can just look at this and say, oh, this interesting, though a bit vague, I wonder if other studies/polls are more explicit, have precise definitions?
I dunno.
Do you maybe wanna provide statistics that you think are more accurate?
… I honestly wouldn’t call this deceptive, at least not intentionally.
....
This is basically a fluffy blog post from a polling firm, not a published study.
The intention is to create a wide gap between "actual" and "perception". I would call that intentionally deceptive. Its marketing.
But if you look at this and … don’t realize that they are just being vague and not precisely defining terms…
So... probably most people then.
… and you just declare that your methodological definition is just, the correct one… and then are displeased that they don’t say which def. they’re using…
Not remotely what I said, so please don't put words in my mouth.
You can just look at this and say, oh, this interesting, though a bit vague, I wonder if other studies/polls are more explicit, have precise definitions?
I think you're missing the problem here. I recognize these numbers as suspect due to the vagueness. You recognize these numbers as suspect due to their vagueness. Many people, even in this post, did not.
Do you maybe wanna provide statistics that you think are more accurate?
Even if all you do is source from GSS, it hasn't been 4% since the early 90's, and has more than tripled since then - and thats self-identifying.
I'm not pointing this out to say "Oh look, there are more bisexuals than they claim!", but "This is a shitty infographic, do not trust these numbers as being remotely realistic or accurate".
They think 26% of people have a household income over 500k? Wtf?
For many, "transgender" means any form of gender nonfomformity. That being said, protect your trans comrades with that in mind if basic human decency wasn't enough.
There is also what I'd like to call "gender non-acknowledgement"
e.g.: Like, yes, I am a man and it's convenient and keeps me "safe" to act as such, but I don't really give a shit. I just don't identify with any of it
you don't have to use this label, but a commonly understood word for this is "agender". just wanted to let you know about it, in case you didn't know
Can you explain the difference between "agender" and "gender non-binary"? Is the latter just more restrictive in recognition of only two genders while the former is more inclusive?
Some would argue what you suggest, but generally non binary just means not man or woman. Agender is as the previous commenter said, a marked indifference or objection to confirming to or identifying with any gender identity.
i would say they describe two separate axes. "agender" is how much you identify with gender at all, whereas "gender non-binary" describes your experience of gender, when/if you have it (which is quite a broad term, with the only definition being "not the binary experience of being a a man or woman")
to elaborate, there are other terms e.g. "demigender" or "genderflux" that describe different points on the "how much do you identify with having gender at all" axis (these are like, partially identify with having gender, but not totally)
so one could be agender or demigirl/boy depending on how much they relate to gender and what they feel their gender is when they do, for example (usually, in this type of situation, someone can still be classified under the bigger umbrella of "agender", even if they do experience gender sometimes)
(also, the terns might seem like a lot, but a) they're not super important, and b) they're mostly learning root words and modifiers, e.g. "a" is "without", and "gender" is... gender. "demi" is some, "flux" is... flux, etc)
I'd imagine, if we cut through the bullshit Christian guilt and toxic masculinity and any other self repression, the percentage of bisexual people would actually be way higher.
Hey, I'm a man happily married to a woman, but...
I think Americans don't understand what 21% means. Like the only one I think is even remotely in the ballpark is the B and if you mean "out to themselves and others" then not even that. Seriously though, this is a bit more than 1 in 5. If that portion of Americans were trans most people you know would have at least one trans relative, or you'd be seeing a lot of families that are mostly trans people. At that rate you wouldn't just have a few options here and there, you'd have trans specific gyms, you'd have several trans coworkers, you'd have to learn new names for people in your life annoyingly often.
At 21% we would outnumber each racial group except white (non Hispanic).
I really can't emphasize this enough, if we were 21% of the population, based on basic observation, we're so much better at passing for cis than anyone thinks, because if that's the case we're looking at in the upper 90% range of completely indistinguishable.
A number of these are contradictory.
Most of the US (56%) is considered “partially illiterate” so that’s not unexpected .
Only 3% of the US is atheist? Either the numbers are wrong or the US is utterly fucked.
I didn't see a stat for agnostic. Many don't identify as atheist but anyone outside those two groups tends to lump them as one. At least that's my observation.
Is 4% really accurate for the percentage of bis? I have met a ton of conservatives that think being bi is a choice which I interpret as meaning they're bi. It seems like the number undercounts the closeted / self-denying bis.
I wish.
I'm sure it's more around 5% being trans since there are people still in the closet or just not reported