Majority of American Voters Shrug at Trump Indictment. 53 Percent Want Him Pardoned If Convicted
Hellsadvocate@kbin.social to 
Politics@kbin.social – 43 points – 
rollingstone.com
Even though most voters say that the case against the former president is “strong,” they don’t want to see him serving jail time
There is no way that 53% is correct. Is everyone really that fucking dumb
here's the actual poll
they sampled an incredibly small sample size. It's extremely easy to get fucked up results from assuming that you can make a poll representative of Americans as a whole. Like. where I live... most people in the state want him locked up (or you know. burned at the stake.) But, you go an hour out the cities and even the democrats there would be likely to express some hesitancy. Because it's trump country out there.
and that assumes the poll wasn't meant to get this result (for example polling in ways that get maybe more conservative democrats. or people simply lying and saying they're democrats.)
Actually the sample size checks out. I love it when people see "Smol number not as big as big number, therefore sample size bad" and I am going to pull a very elitist argument here and say that people at Harvard University likely know more about polling than you do, just saying.
Small sample size is fine when it's representative of the population. Trying to extract nationwide sentiment, a very diverse thing, off a small size is unlikely to be very representative.
Except the numbers work out, and studies have made very very sweeping generalizations based on much smaller sample sizes of much larger demographics (for example the 1 in 5 myth comes from a study that had less than 100 respondents). This study is a dream compared to those.
Just because studies have made sweeping statements, doesn't mean they're right. I could say I've got the longest member I'm the world based on a study I conducted in my basement, but it doesn't change reality.
Where did I say making sweeping statements equals correctness? Man people are getting so emotional over this because it turns out the majority don't agree with them. Guess it shreds the narrative that they're the majority.
What's the margin of error reported for that question?
Oh my gawd! You have the *longestz member?? Based on an actual study??
Call Rolling Stone!
Not enough people took a statistics class in school and it shows.
I imagine with the safe-spacification of college statistics is no longer a required elective in many programs.
It's kind of ironic you've gone from defending Harvard to shitting on colleges in a span of just two comments.
Typically anyone with an anime girl profile pic is going to be a nut job in some way or another.
The fact that people who still do take stats classes likely know what they're talking about is not contradictory to the point that these classes may no longer be required in most degrees. Hope this helps! Try not to blow a head gasket trying to process this info.
Also ironic that I was the one person who defended your original comment.
Sounds like someone who definitely went to college and knows the typical graduation requirements
Dumbest fucking take. Can’t even imagine what was going through your head as you were writing that.
For your own sake, seek out better friends and media.
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2023-06-16/poll-majority-says-trump-should-drop-out-of-presidential-race
A sample size of 2090, as in this study, is large enough to bring the margin of error down to 2%.
Furthermore, there is no need to speculate about who they polled, because this information is available. Questioning the results of the poll is as unreasonable as 2020 Trump supporters questioning every poll that showed Biden with an advantage.
The section that says "Results were weighted for age within gender, region, race/ethnicity, marital status, household size, income,
employment, education, political party, and political ideology where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online." kinda sticks out to me, too.
Yeah, that admission kind of makes me pause when considering the results. There should have been a page of the published poll that better described how this was taken. For instance, doing just a LAN line poll skews poll results considerably.
But it's only the beginning of the fed case against Trump, so I'm sure opinion will change.
That's how all reputable election polling was done in 2020. For example, if you take a random sample that happens to be 52% men and 48% women, it is completely appropriate to overweight the women's responses to match their actual percentage in the US, 50.5%.
In fact, in the 2020 election there was a bunch of Trump supporters who had the same doubts as you, and they would "unskew" polls with 52% men responding to give them 52% of the final weighting. Lo and behold, their "unskewed" polls showed Trump in the lead. But the proof of the method is in the election results...
2090 is not a small sample size.
That's a normal sample size for polls. Unfortunately, people are this dumb.
Most polls are conducted with a political agenda, so they don’t really care…. Especially because it’s incredibly uncommon for people to actually look.
I mean, I tend to bet on the average person's stupidity. So I'd answer yes?
Dems continuously win the popular vote, which means 0 Republicans would say no to this and some Dems would say yes? I'm not buying that.
Agreed. This poll is hard to believe. There was another one last week saying a majority agreed with the indictment. There’s lies, dammed lies, and polls.
Take this with a grain of salt. A pollster can come up with any results they want if they ask the question carefully.
This is almost certainly something put out by Trump’s team to manipulate public opinion. It’s bullshit and not worth anyone’s energy.
Harris Polls has been described as " when Harvard Poll meets Fox News" and "cherrypicks to advance agendas". Just like when looking into bias of news sources, it's important to look into the bias of polling sources.
It seems like you're thinking of this article, which is talking about Fox News misrepresenting a Harris poll, and the Fox "journalists" cherry-picking to fit an agenda. That article isn't criticizing Harris, which mostly over exaggerated Democrat victory in the 2020 elections. Not saying they're not biased, but it seems like you may have misunderstood a source?
I replied to a different comment linking that article, so I'll copy it here:
It's the people they poll. Do you have a landline for them to call? Do you answer calls from randos on your cell?
Me either.
They're polling a bunch of ancient people sitting around watching daytime TV.
I'd take this with a grain of salt. Mark Penn, chairman of The Harris Poll and one of three who supervised this poll, is a known Trump supporter who believes in the Democratic "deep state" conspiracy theory. Dritan Nesho, CEO of HarrisX and the second person supervising this poll, tries to appear bipartisan in public, is a little more discreet but is also a Trump supporter. I gave up looking up stuff on these people cuz I feel gross now. Dunno how The Harris Poll and HarrisX are affiliated. Yeah this poll is b.s.
I figured it was something like that. If anybody besides Treason Trump did the things he did, they would already be in jail.
It's silly to judge a polling outfit solely on the politics of their CEO.
FWIW, 538 gave Harris a "B" grade with 83% accuracy in 2020. If anything, Harris seemed to overestimate Biden's support (eg they predicted Trump would lose FL and NC).
Their accuracy of their election prediction is separate from their polling bias. I mentioned in a higher comment that their polling technique has been described as "when Harvard Poll meets Fox News" and that they "cherrypick to advance agendas"
This article does talk about "When a Harvard poll meets Fox News", but it's criticizing Fox News's distortion of a Harris poll, not the poll itself (i.e., "How Fox News and conservative media outlets are using a recent Harvard Poll to support their own election narrative.")
And Penn is actually the one complaining about those who "cherry pick to advance agendas". He specifically objected to Fox cherry picking his poll to say that voters prefer a "law and order" candidate like Trump.
Thank you for showing where that phrase was used in writing, but that is not the only time he has been pointed out for the irony of his juxtaposition. He is a former pollster for the Clintons that became very "trumpy" (to use Politico's word) and instead of being on all news shows the only one that would bring him on is Fox.
The thing about polling is that one can write the questions in order to get the answers they want or need and data can be extracted to portray what is needed. Without the raw data, we really don't know what was asked or how the data portrayed was pulled.
In almost every case, ~85% of GOP study participants voted along party lines, whereas only 67% of democrats did... making the "majority" result the GOP-aligned one. I think the extreme nature of identity politics in the last few years especially is really making it hard to take any poll results like this particularly seriously.
53% is difficult to believe.
Some of that 53% are liberals who fear national unrest if Trump faces consequences. So they are erring on the side of not stirring the crazy assholes.
Probably some of the bOtH sIdEs people as well.
People are too friendly; they don't want to hurt people.
No. He did too much damage and changed laws so he could hurt others and it bit him in the ass. Why should he be pardoned?
For us to survive as a democracy, he needs to rot in jail.
I admire your confidence but I'm not altogether sure it will go down like that. Given the cognitive dissonance in his voter base on the one hand and the cult of personality making plenty of his voters plain don't care about anything he does, I think I'll reserve judgement for now. If he gets convicted, does it even prevent him from running?
I recommend the realistic perspective offered by Teri Kanefield. I started following her on Twitter. Now she's very active on Mastodon and as a blogger. [See @Teri_Kanefield or https://law-and-politics.online/@Teri\_Kanefield or https://terikanefield.com/] Like her, I would say that I do not feel confident or optimistic, but I also try to avoid being fatalistic. I do not expect his most ardent supporters to change their views no matter what, but I do not think that they are anywhere close to 53% of the population. All I'm really saying is that I believe that after a trial, or several trials, the number of Americans wanting him to be pardoned would fall below half. It's just a guess based on how little is known now. To be up front, I didn't read the linked article, I'm only commenting on that 53% result. This poll was taken at a time when we have less information than we will at the end of trial(s). Also, if you just picture "ex-Pres Trump in jail" many of us squeal with glee but many Americans probably can't picture it. Let's say that during the course of the trial(s) there is discussion about how his incarceration might look—possibilities from supervised house arrest with media blackouts to some comfortable quarters within a secure military base. Talking about it makes the possibility take shape. Some portion of that 53% might be comfortable with the image of him playing golf, dressed in polos not orange jumpsuits, but restricted in terms of movement and communications.
In answer to your question, convicted felons are not prevented from running for president. One upshot of this is that political prosecution is not a thing in the US. We show our judgment when we vote, and that collective judgment is considered to be above all other factors. Obviously a large percentage of us have poor judgment, much of it based on disinformation. The solution to everything is voting, and convincing others to vote—particularly the cynical and low information types. Our media is personality driven but liking or not liking Trump, Biden, Kamala personally is so much less important than voting for democracy over fascism.
Huh. TIL 53% want a different set of rules for the rich and powerful.
Prison for the rest of his life, to set a precedent that Nobody is above the law. And that all conmen deserve punishment.
Well I 100% want to see him go to fucking jail.
It is just one poll. One poll has the same amount of predictive power as a slice of bread.
Also, that being said, polls aren't meant to be predictive, they capture the feelings of the people being polled, at that point in time. Trump's legal woes are just beginning, he's probably got another state indictment in Georgia coming in July and potentially a second from special counsel Jack Smith with regards to January 6th. There is still plenty of time and material to come that will sway people's hearts and minds.
Whenever I see stuff like this, I just feel bad for the millions of people who have been hoodwinked and brainwashed by Fox News.
“This survey was conducted online within the United States from June 14-15, 2023 among 2,090 registered voters by The Harris Poll and HarrisX. Results were weighted for age within gender, region, race/ethnicity, marital status, household size, income, employment, education, political party, and political ideology where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online. The poll was supervised by pollsters: Mark Penn (Chairman, The Harris Poll) Dritan Nesho (CEO, HarrisX) Stephen Ansolabehere (Professor and CAPS Director Emeritus, Harvard University)”
2000 something sample size is pretty small, and the weighted and propensity score is “intriguing”.
As much as a foundational understanding of statistics would go a long way towards making the average citizen substantially better-informed, stuff like this sometimes makes my shoulders sag in despair. Even if you know the basics, the corrections, weighting, and methodologies used to try and tease the/a 'truth' out of a sample are often so arcane that it feels as though you know nothing at all, and are right back to square zero: do I trust these results at all, or no?
What a mess. I really don't want to believe that a slim majority of Americans want us to go the Nixon route, but it's hard to tell where my suspicion of the methods used begins to blend into bias...
Harris polls are supposed to be very reputable. But considering this guy couldn't even win the popular vote, how the hell do more than half of people want him pardoned?
Prison for the rest of his miserable life.
I haven't seen any reason to trust polling since 2016.
I never get directly asked who I'm voting for in polls, it's always "favorability" bullshit.
I hate all of them, but I'm not voting for fascist or fascist-lite.
Polls in 2016 were more accurate than 2012, but almost everyone except 538 drew the wrong conclusions: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-fivethirtyeight-gave-trump-a-better-chance-than-almost-anyone-else/
this shows you who they polled.
53%? I'm wondering what questions were asked, and how. For example, would they want Trump pardoned if the alternative is being sent to a maximum security prison? Minimum security? House arrest? How many of them understand the seriousness of the charges? Should all people accused of those crimes be pardoned? If not, then why is an ex-President different, and what does that say about our justice system?