YouGov recently asked people to guess the percentage of American adults who belong to 43 different minority groups, among other characteristics. The poll was… interesting, to say the least.
At its most basic level, much of the strange estimates you’re about to see could be attributed to perception bias. It’s our natural tendency to make assumptions about life and our world consistent with our own lives and the spaces we inhabit. These perceptions are often at least somewhat wrong, and that’s where consuming media and seeking new experiences can help us make more accurate judgments.
Unless the media (especially online) does the opposite, that is. Perhaps due to the fear-mongering of right-wing propaganda…
Americans “vastly overestimate the size of minority groups,” including the LGBTQ+ community.
If you ask someone like Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Taylor Greene, there are 120.5 transgender individuals for every 100 people in the United States. That’s actually the rate of civilian firearm ownership, but these YouGov results aren’t much better.
Ask an American, and they’ll tell you that 21% of the population is trans. The actual number? 0.6%.
Apparently, gays and lesbians make up 30% of the population, and bisexuals are 29%. The true numbers are 3% and 4%.
In total, 7.6% is below the 10% figure many casually threw around for over a decade. And even though recent news coverage positioned these figures as “doubling” over that period, it’s still far less than those who answered this poll.
Headlines like these often fail to reflect the difference between queer people existing and queer people openly identifying themselves.
That still doesn’t explain why Americans seem to think that 80% of Americans are LGBTQ+. Can you even imagine? San Francisco and New York City, considered the gayest of all metro areas, are both below these figures. NYC had the highest total population at 706,000, and San Francisco had the highest percentage: 6.7%.
Even if you assumed a complete overlap of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people with transgender people, that would mean that 69% of America is LGB (nice). And that there are no trans people who identify as straight. So, uh… still really, really, high.
What else do Americans misestimate?
Well, if you believe this poll’s findings, 30% of us are Muslim, 30% are Jewish, 27% are Indigenous, 29% are Asian, and 41% are Black.
That’s…
Hold on. Opening my calculator app.
…not correct.
Just based on total figures, either zero white people exist, or literally all of them are also one of those racial and ethnic minorities.
If you’re wondering about Christians, you’d be right to assume the inverse of what we’ve seen so far. Members of larger groups underestimate their total size as opposed to over-estimating minority groups.
While 70% of American adults are Christian, these findings would suggest it’s 58%.
Black people do think there are more Black people than there really are, and so do first-generation immigrants. But these disparities are far less worrying. Referring back to our perception bias, we can understand why you’d estimate that the broader population reflects your lived experience. But following that logic, it makes even less sense to assume – and allow me to repeat this for emphasis – that EIGHTY PERCENT of Americans are queer and trans.
What does this all mean?
It’s a widely accepted fact that when exposed to different cultures and greater diversity, people are far more empathetic to and accepting of those people.
That’s why kids tend to, as some would say, “get woke” once they go to college or, you know, leave their hometowns.
So why would people think cisgender, heterosexual, white Christians are disappearing like the melting ice caps? Scratch that, they don’t believe that either. So why would people think there are fewer cisgender, heterosexual, white Christians than in reality? Maybe it’s because the media have convinced a majority of people that there’s an “invasion” at the southern border. Or because the internet, which once helped positively increase trans visibility, has now been weaponized to attack trans people.
385 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced at the state level so far in 2023.
Our media has fanned the flames of queer and transphobia as if there’s a trans man in every women’s restroom and a “biological boy” sneaking their way into every girl’s sport.
We are a country that doesn’t care about ~583,000 people experiencing homelessness, a number that rises alongside its root causes.
We are also a country that believes that only 2 in 10 people are cisgender and heterosexual. I guess.
Chances are high that you’ve heard more about a manufactured “groomer” crisis than the very real issues we face, evidenced by the fact that these people overestimated the number of homeowners and those making six figures.
And if the media (traditional or social) is responsible for someone’s entire view of the world, these stats are less surprising. It’s kind of like how Facebook users are exposed to 25% more Black crime suspects than there actually are, thanks to police agencies. They say Twitter isn’t real life, but the same argument goes for news bias.
The truth is, only real life is real life.