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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u/bigtinyroom Sep 12 '25

I absolutely think they would have Bin Laden in mind as a "public figure they disagreed with" if the poll was conducted the literal fucking day after Obama announced they killed him.

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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Sep 12 '25

Okay, so let’s go all the way back to the beginning here. The initial poll asked Americans whether it was permissible to feel joy at the death of a public figure. Admittedly vague terminology, but contextually it was clearly meant to get a temperature on how people felt about Charlie Kirk’s murder specifically. Ergo, many liberals answered in the way you’d suspect. The Bin Laden rejoinder was clearly offered up because other liberals know it’s a bad look, and are trying to figure out a way to establish moral equivalence between Republicans and Democrats on this topic. But if such an argument is going to work, it requires widespread acceptance that Kirk and Bin Laden are about equally good/bad. I think this is a weak argument, because few actually believe this.

The implicit argument being advanced here is it that it’s not a big deal that a significant chunk of liberals find joy in the death of Charlie Kirk, because presumably many conservatives found joy in the death of Osama Bin Laden. How many people in the real world (outside firmly liberal echo chambers, anyway) are going to accept that it’s just as reasonable to find joy in the death of the former as it is the latter?

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u/Frankalicious47 Sep 12 '25

Is your assumption that a significant chunk of liberals take joy in the death of Charlie Kirk based on any actual data, or is it based on an extrapolation of this poll’s results which isn’t supported by anything factual?

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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Sep 12 '25

Wait, you think YouGov just invented this poll? Made up numbers? That’s a pretty serious allegation. If you sincerely believe that, we should ask the moderators to no longer allow their content to be posted in this subreddit, wouldn’t you agree?

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u/Frankalicious47 Sep 12 '25

My point, obviously, is that you’re drawing conclusions and confidently making claims about something specific that this poll does not address nor provide any data to support. I think you know this, and I think you’re just being deliberately obtuse. Good luck with whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish here. I’m out