Arnold Kling checks the details behind a recent poll that produced a lot of excitement—the Rasmussen one about disconnected elites. As he says at the outset, polls can be taken for reasons other than general information. They can also be used to paint an intentionally slanted picture.
Ultimately, he doesn’t think this poll was intentionally skewed, but its peculiarities narrow the demographics whose thinking it captures. By reading the actual details of the poll rather than the headlines it generated, we find it defines “elites” as people with post-graduate degrees with household incomes north of $150,000—and living in locales with population density greater than 10,000 per square mile. The latter figure sets the group apart, since it mainly pertains to elites in very dense urban settings like downtown New York, Boston, or Chicago: locales with high-rises rather than sprawl.
Instead, what this sample is picking is people who are indeed well above average in terms income and education, but whose most distinguishing characteristic is choosing to live in crowded sections of older cities. The best label I can come up for this demographic is Ultra-Citified Upper Middle Class, or ultra-citified for short.
The findings of their political beliefs may be interesting, but their influence is likely rather limited. They may believe democracy has no value and imposing their beliefs on others is fine, but the ultra-citified aren’t a large enough demographic to swing elections, for instance.
Anyway, the story serves as an interesting reminder never to assume the headline or the short news item under it are accurate enough to tell a story of much value, no matter how trivial the news item appears at first blush.
Hi all. I was looking forward to reading Cynthia's book report. Then I had to reshuffle my plans for the rest of this week to accommodate a rush copyediting deadline, and the crunch is not over yet, so I have to ration time for all other activities.
Rest assured I will read it and probably have comments because I do find the topic interesting as well as consequential, and I have not made up my mind what to think.
I read in the WSJ that Apple canceled plans to build a car. I was wondering how they'd build it without Windows.