Judging by recent Rasmussen poll results, naive instrumentalism is far more prevalent among the politically-engaged elite than in the adult US population at large.
Asked whether they would prefer for the political candidates they favor to win election by cheating than lose, 35% of "the elite one percent" -- i.e., people with postgraduate …
Judging by recent Rasmussen poll results, naive instrumentalism is far more prevalent among the politically-engaged elite than in the adult US population at large.
Asked whether they would prefer for the political candidates they favor to win election by cheating than lose, 35% of "the elite one percent" -- i.e., people with postgraduate degrees and annual incomes of more than $150,000 living in densely-populated urban areas -- answered "yes," versus only 7% of other poll respondents. And among a subset of the elite one percent who said that they talk about politics every day (a question that only 8% of "non-elite" respondents answered in the affirmative) 69% said that they'd prefer for the candidates they favor to win through cheating than for them to lose(!)
Interesting. Though if someone is politically disengaged or apathetic, any naive instrumentalist dispositions they have wouldn't show up on specifically political questions. You'd need to ask about norm-violating means of achieving something else that they cared about more.
A fair point. In light of which I'll modify my take on those poll results: they simply indicate that naive instrumentalism is rife among the politically-engaged elite in the US. Which is dismaying but not surprising.
I would simply prefer to doubt the survey methodology. I love slides 10 and 22. Re slide 25, it would be interesting to see what proportion of those responding to that particular question would agree that Trump was not re-elected because of cheating by his opponents.
All I know about the specific survey question at issue here -- aside from the fact that it was conducted by Scott Rasmussen, the founder and former president of Rasmussen reports, a Balletopedia editor-at-large, and FWIW a co-founder of ESPN -- is that responses were received from 1000 participants. What reason do you have to mistrust the result?
I don't want to get into a long discussion on Richard Chappell's website about this, as I see it as peripheral. I am quite familiar with surveys and statistical methods, but had not heard of Rasmussen previously. A quick search did find a couple of recent articles that further cemented my doubts:
"A few weeks later, Rasmussen again published dubious poll results on behalf of a right-wing organization. This time, the findings alleged to have uncovered rampant fraud in 2020, including that 1 in 12 Americans had been offered “pay” or a “reward” for their vote. Trump and his allies celebrated the poll; again, the results do not comport with the reality of there being no demonstrable wide-scale vote-buying scheme at the state or national level."
This suggests to me that there are some problems in either the wording of questions or the sampling Rasmussen uses.
suggests only that "Rasmussen has indeed had strongly Republican-leaning results relative to the consensus for many years. Despite that strong Republican house effect, however, they’ve had roughly average accuracy overall because polls have considerably understated Republican performance in several recent elections...", and argues that ABC not drop Rasmussen's polls from the 538 site's poll averaging. But he did criticize Rasmussen Reports ten years ago for their automated telephone sampling methods.
More generally, there is a moderate literature (mainly from business schools!) on the ethical behaviour of atheists, which reminded me of this presentation by Rasmussen.
Unlike you, I claim no expertise re public polling technique or statistical methods, but I've had some prior familiarity with Philip Bump's punditry, from which I've gathered that he's a partisan hack. His critique of Rasmussen's contentions about the prevalence of various sorts of hanky-panky by mail voters in 2020 struck me as essentially question-begging, and through hasty Googling I found a cogent rebuttal in this blogpost: https://ethicsalarms.com/2023/12/13/confirmation-bias-test-the-rasmussen-2020-voter-fraud-survey/
Judging by recent Rasmussen poll results, naive instrumentalism is far more prevalent among the politically-engaged elite than in the adult US population at large.
Asked whether they would prefer for the political candidates they favor to win election by cheating than lose, 35% of "the elite one percent" -- i.e., people with postgraduate degrees and annual incomes of more than $150,000 living in densely-populated urban areas -- answered "yes," versus only 7% of other poll respondents. And among a subset of the elite one percent who said that they talk about politics every day (a question that only 8% of "non-elite" respondents answered in the affirmative) 69% said that they'd prefer for the candidates they favor to win through cheating than for them to lose(!)
https://www.rmgresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Elite-One-Percent.pdf
https://twitter.com/RobertBluey/status/1770789411568910756
Interesting. Though if someone is politically disengaged or apathetic, any naive instrumentalist dispositions they have wouldn't show up on specifically political questions. You'd need to ask about norm-violating means of achieving something else that they cared about more.
A fair point. In light of which I'll modify my take on those poll results: they simply indicate that naive instrumentalism is rife among the politically-engaged elite in the US. Which is dismaying but not surprising.
I would simply prefer to doubt the survey methodology. I love slides 10 and 22. Re slide 25, it would be interesting to see what proportion of those responding to that particular question would agree that Trump was not re-elected because of cheating by his opponents.
All I know about the specific survey question at issue here -- aside from the fact that it was conducted by Scott Rasmussen, the founder and former president of Rasmussen reports, a Balletopedia editor-at-large, and FWIW a co-founder of ESPN -- is that responses were received from 1000 participants. What reason do you have to mistrust the result?
Hi William.
I don't want to get into a long discussion on Richard Chappell's website about this, as I see it as peripheral. I am quite familiar with surveys and statistical methods, but had not heard of Rasmussen previously. A quick search did find a couple of recent articles that further cemented my doubts:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/08/rasmussen-538-polling/
which claims
"A few weeks later, Rasmussen again published dubious poll results on behalf of a right-wing organization. This time, the findings alleged to have uncovered rampant fraud in 2020, including that 1 in 12 Americans had been offered “pay” or a “reward” for their vote. Trump and his allies celebrated the poll; again, the results do not comport with the reality of there being no demonstrable wide-scale vote-buying scheme at the state or national level."
This suggests to me that there are some problems in either the wording of questions or the sampling Rasmussen uses.
Nate Silver, in his blog comments,
https://www.natesilver.net/p/polling-averages-shouldnt-be-political
suggests only that "Rasmussen has indeed had strongly Republican-leaning results relative to the consensus for many years. Despite that strong Republican house effect, however, they’ve had roughly average accuracy overall because polls have considerably understated Republican performance in several recent elections...", and argues that ABC not drop Rasmussen's polls from the 538 site's poll averaging. But he did criticize Rasmussen Reports ten years ago for their automated telephone sampling methods.
More generally, there is a moderate literature (mainly from business schools!) on the ethical behaviour of atheists, which reminded me of this presentation by Rasmussen.
Unlike you, I claim no expertise re public polling technique or statistical methods, but I've had some prior familiarity with Philip Bump's punditry, from which I've gathered that he's a partisan hack. His critique of Rasmussen's contentions about the prevalence of various sorts of hanky-panky by mail voters in 2020 struck me as essentially question-begging, and through hasty Googling I found a cogent rebuttal in this blogpost: https://ethicsalarms.com/2023/12/13/confirmation-bias-test-the-rasmussen-2020-voter-fraud-survey/