From millionaires to Muslims, small subgroups of the population seem much larger to many Americans When it comes to estimating the size of demographic groups, Americans rarely get it right. In two recent YouGov polls, we asked respondents to guess the percentage (ranging from 0% to 100%) of American adults who are members of 43 different groups, including racial and religious groups, as well as other less frequently studied groups, such as pet owners and those who are left-handed. When people’s average perceptions of group sizes are compared to actual population estimates, an intriguing pattern emerges: Americans tend to vastly overestimate the size of minority groups. This holds for sexual minorities, including the proportion of gays and lesbians (estimate: 30%, true: 3%), bisexuals (estimate: 29%, true: 4%), and people who are transgender (estimate: 21%, true: 0.6%). It also applies to religious minorities, such as Muslim Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%) and Jewish Americans (estimate: 30%, true: 2%). And we find the same sorts of overestimates for racial and ethnic minorities, such as Native Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%), Asian Americans (estimate: 29%, true: 6%), and Black Americans (estimate: 41%, true: 12%). https://today.yougov.com/topics/pol...ricans-misestimate-small-subgroups-population
Wow that is some gross overestimations there. Only 11% of Americans are left handed. I'm pretty rare.
I have good friends in every category. Funny how they omitted Illegal Aliens, with it being somewhere between a supposedly static figure of 11,000,000 that hasn't changed since the 1970's and the more mathematically credible figure of 30,000,000+? I wonder why? . I also have good friends in that category. Anyone see an error in % of Dems and Reps?
That doesn't surprise me at all. Our country is extremely car-centric. I was actually surprised how low the number of gun owners was.
