Poll: Liberals more likely to overestimate stats on police shootings; Conservatives overestimate too

Politics US Politics
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Two things struck me by this:

  1. The high number of people who are just astronomically off on the numbers actually at play. This must be at least partially a reflection of media coverage, though perhaps not wanting to low ball the numbers on a poll might be an issues.

  2. That Conservatives were more accurate than Very Conservatives. This shouldn’t be a matter of media consumption, so I’m not sure what could account for the discrepancy.

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The title of the thread makes me giggle.

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I tried a couple of things, but I didn’t think it was fair to blast the liberals for gross ignorance when the conservatives had “only” significant ignorance.

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It’s been pointed out that neither have any idea of what the number is= liberals just pick the number that makes their ideas look good; conservatives the reverse. In this case, the conservatives happen to be correct.
Conservatives will tell you the murder rates in the US are about the same as in Western Europe, when they range from 4 to 10 times as many.
When you ask “what percentage of US federal spending goes to foreign aid?” the answer is 25%, even though it is actually less than 1%.

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But that didn’t happen here: the conservatives were wrong…sometimes by 2 orders of magnitude. They just weren’t as wrong as the liberals.

And if your theory were true (I generally agree with it, BTW), you’d think the Very Conservatives would have overestimated by less than the Conservatives…or that neither would have overestimated at all. Neither happened.

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Good point.
Also some stats

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I think the fact that the majority of all people are from wrong to wildly wrong on these numbers greatly outweighs the significance of the differences mentioned.

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I think both are similarly important in addressing what I believe to be the problem here: the media. That everyone overestimates the deaths demonstrates how the mainstream media shapes public opinion through sensational, inaccurate, and often completely false reporting. That one group is less effected strengthens the case for my first premise, and also shows that looking to new media can be an antidote to establishment media.

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