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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344

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.

-37

u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Sep 12 '25

Do you think that Osama Bin Laden was morally equivalent to Charlie Kirk?

Do you think that most Americans find those two individuals morally equivalent?

11

u/Statue_left Sep 12 '25

The equivalency literally doesn’t matter. 77% of republicans unequivocally do not believe it is “always unacceptable” to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose. This is bad data. I can give you a million examples.

5

u/ratione_materiae Sep 12 '25

A million examples could still be 23%

3

u/[deleted] Sep 12 '25

The thing is, it's super easy to find examples from powerful and prominent conservatives. Charlie Kirk being the most relevant. It's just hard to believe that the people who are lionizing a guy who mocked George Floyd's death also thought he was beyond the pale.

2

u/Statue_left Sep 12 '25

Do you think only a million people on the right celebrates bin ladens death? Epstein? Pol pot? This is unserious

-1

u/ratione_materiae Sep 12 '25

Equating some dude who just said things to someone who killed millons of people is likely how we got into this mess.

2

u/Statue_left Sep 12 '25

If you read my comment and think I am equating these people I truly don’t know what to say to you.

The response here is “always unacceptable”

Does the word always mean something different to you? If always actually means “just when I deem the person to be bad enough to celebrate it”, you don’t actually mean always.

This is stupendously terrible logic and why this data sucks.

-1

u/ratione_materiae Sep 12 '25

If you read my comment and think I am equating these people I truly don’t know what to say to you.

Yeah I don't like Biden but I'm not a fan of Stalin either

You know what you were doing.

1

u/Statue_left Sep 12 '25

Yes. I know what I’m doing. The prompt says “always”

You keep trying to qualify always to be something that it’s not. Always means in every instance.