The two party system can be very deceiving when it comes to the beliefs of the people of the United States. It fails in describing the beliefs of the nation because it tries to sum it up with two words: Democrat or Republican. Many political debates revolve around the idea that the majority of each party agrees the that party’s opinions on policies and issues. Obviously it can’t be 100%, we know that. There are plenty of people who identify with one party but have many beliefs that would align them with the opposite party. I decided to do some research into the topic.
Since it is difficult to tell how many republicans are true republican (or democrats), I chose a topic that is very split: gay rights/marriage. It is known that, in general, democrats support gay marriage and republicans oppose it; it is also known that their is vigorous debate on this issue. When I looked for numbers for and against gay marriage in each party I found some results that point to real problems with our political system.
I ran into the obvious fact that large amounts of each party had opinions on gay marriage that differed from their party’s opinion. This is not exactly what I want to talk about though. I want to discuss bias. As I searched for percentages and articles about who supports gay marriage, I found huge contradictions. The first thing that caught my eye and made me question the facts was and article by David Lampo in the Huffington Post. He said, “57 percent of Republicans support either same sex marriage or civil unions (Fox News poll).” Searching for some more facts on the topic, I found a poll from the Pew Forum that had contradictory data.
According to this poll, only 24 percent of the Republicans support gay marriage, which makes more sense in terms of being in line with Republican ideals, but makes no sense at all in comparison to the Huffington Post. Even more problems are caused when we throw ABC News into the mix. Dalia Sussman says
“A majority of Americans oppose allowing homosexual couples to marry legally, but most also say it’s not worth amending the U.S. Constitution to ban such unions, an ABCNEWS poll has found.”
How can she say this when the Pew Forum shows that only 44 percent of the public oppose gay marriage? And while Huffington shows that a large portion of republicans support same sex marriage (and we can assume the majority of democrats support it also)? What is going on? Are the Republican and Democratic ideals different than we thought? Are people lying about their party affiliation? Are the writers of these articles lying? No, not per se. The problem is politics, and more specifically bias.
Statistics can be very misleading. Politicians and journalists use them because they are trusted by people as fact, but in reality they are not. Numbers can be misused for personal gain. The polls that the data come from can be biased. Different questions will lead to different answers, as in the ABC article linked above. It says, “55 percent say [same-sex marriage] should be illegal,” while “when opponents are asked if it’s worth amending the Constitution to ban such marriages, six in 10 of them say it’s not.”
So 55% of people want same-sex marriage to be illegal, but 60% say it should not be put in the Constitution, an method of actually making it illegal. In other words, same-sex marriage should be illegal, without being officially illegal. Because that makes sense. The question asked can have huge implications on the answers received. There are analysts and psychologists that work with the makers of polls to determine whether they should ask about support gay marriage, enacting laws, changing the constitution, including civil unions in their questioning, or rather focus on gays’ rights in businesses or their right to adopt. They will determine which question will provide them with the results that they most desire, and that is all they will use.
Politicians and journalists can have biased polls not only because of the type of questions they ask, but also because of the people they ask. Many people argue that certain polls have over-representations of certain parties. Furthermore, the entire poll is rarely used. Writers can pick and choose which numbers they want to show you – the numbers that are most likely going to change your opinions.
What you have to understand is this: The numbers don’t add up.
Mike, the reason that people assume that republican means you oppose gay marriage is because of =what the system has become. Many times people enjoy linking one’s political affiliation with hot topics like gay marriage and abortion because they want to debate. They want to fight about it since there are such strong feelings about the issue, even thought there is almost no chance of changing people’s opinions on this topic.
Eric I’m glad you call it a “political game” because that’s what it truly is.
The problem with polling bias is not whether it will affect people’s beliefs, but it misrepresents people’s beliefs, which may have an effect on what other people believe. Although we shouldn’t let polls change our beliefs I’m sure they do effect the opinions of many.
What I don’t understand is why on earth people assume that being a republican and holding their beliefs on government, taxation, etc. has anything at all to do with your beliefs on something like gay marriage. Statistics can easily be warped to match the needs of the one publishing them, but really even if it is somewhere in the 40-70% range it just seems stupid to relate the two at all.
Anyway if there is one thing I learned in my statistics class, it’s that statistics are almost useless and incredibly unreliable when someone else gives them to you. People see the numbers and think that they must be strictly factual, but really there are so many ways to skew the results. Regardless of your beliefs, most people would probably say it’s not worth changing the constitution simply because changing the constitution seems like a big deal
Great point, Molly. When people look at these statistics and figures, they need to go into that with the understanding that they are most likely skewed to create a desired effect. Then, maybe less people would automatically believe all the stats they hear.
It’s a shame that journalists, research institutions and the media alter numbers to fit their values and control the public’s decisions. However, that’s part of the political game. There’s no way to regulate incorrect polling measures that only represent certain representations of the population. Even if there was, would it be necessary? People shouldn’t be aligning their ideals based on statistics and percentages of how many republicans or democrats follow a side. Values should come from what you believe, not what everyone else is saying about an issue.
I think this goes back to the issue that the media provides the public with low quality information. It’s difficult to create an informed opinion when for every statistic and data point out there you can find conflicting information that has a different bias. Yet statistics sound very mathematical and scientific, which make them difficult to fight against. If we want to have a more deliberative society, we need to educate people on how to read into stats like these and be able to identify the biases.