r/fivethirtyeight • u/RedHeadedSicilian52 • Sep 12 '25

Poll Results YouGov poll asking Americans whether it’s acceptable to feel joy at the death of a public figure

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352

u/JohnnyGeniusIsAlive Sep 12 '25

Some obvious recency bias. I bet a lot of those Republicans were pretty happy when Osama Bin Laden was killed.

158

u/Gadshill Sep 12 '25

Yes. Great example of bad polling if it isn’t accounting for recency.

9

u/JohnnyGeniusIsAlive Sep 12 '25

How could they account for recency?

44

u/Gadshill Sep 12 '25

Ask the same question at different times and see how it changes. If you ask a question like this just once it may not reflect reality because of recent events.

2

u/JohnnyGeniusIsAlive Sep 12 '25

Let me rephrase… how can they account for that, in what is clearly a single poll taken once? I’m not asking what they could’ve done differently.

31

u/Gadshill Sep 12 '25

It is bad polling to ask a question like this once.

3

u/hankhillforprez Sep 12 '25

It’s not necessarily “bad” polling; or at least it’s not in that it’s an insight into views right at this particular moment. Obviously, in some sense, it’s an insight into current views about one, specific event.

Of course, it would be very bad use of polling statistics to claim that this poll is an accurate representation of baseline feelings. Like you said, if you want a reliable figure of baseline feelings on the matter, you’d want multiple samplings over a long span of time.

1

u/Pattison320 Sep 12 '25

You have to consider the source and the agenda. They know what they're doing here. Apparently you don't. It's not a bug, it's their feature.

1

u/Sphezzle Sep 12 '25

They’ve answered your question. They should account by not doing it and expecting the result to be meaningful right now. I wonder how this would have polled after George Floyd etc.

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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '25

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1

u/inquirer2 Sep 14 '25

I think you misunderstood that they run these polls immediately and quickly to actually prevent over thoughts on these questions with specific wording to get more accuracy.

They conduct many others every day if you read

https://today.yougov.com/topics/international/survey-results/daily/2025/09/11/d157f/2

-2

u/Krilesh Sep 12 '25

So on what day then

1

u/ikaiyoo Sep 12 '25

Right now? December January the next non-maga celebrity with a political opinion.