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As time goes on, I think there are two surveys which provide the most valuable insight into the voters of Brexit Britain and Trump’s America.
The first, from 2021:
What wild animals do you think you can beat in a fight?
As a follow-up infographic, the US survey showed the answers provided by men and women.
While there was a gap (particularly on the question of fighting a goose) the trends remained disturbingly stable.
God bless and save you, 8% of Americans who think they can defeat an elephant in a fist fight.
The second survey I think about when I try to understand our neighbours to the West is also from YouGov, in 2019.
It asked 1,732 men and women a simple question:
“Do you think if you were playing your very best tennis, you could win a point off Serena Williams?"
12% of men (and 3% of women) said they thought they could.
Taken together, this does suggest that there are 4% of American men who believe they could win a fistfight with an adult wolf but who also acknowledge they will not win a tennis point against Serena Williams.
In a way, I admire those 4% of men. (And hope they continue to never encounter a wolf).
These were novelty topic surveys, intended to get the name YouGov said in print and on-air.
And yet I think they accidentally revealed something about the cultures which standard political surveys never get at.
Significant parts of the voting public in the US are completely detached from reality, and hold levels of confidence in their own place in the world completely at variance with fact.
This is significantly more pronounced among men.
@Tupp_ed dystopian futurism often imagines a time when people are so embedded in a virtual reality that they lose connection with their true reality.
Perhaps the future is already here.
@Tupp_ed I want to know about the 24% of Americans who think they'd lose against a rat.
@anaxamaxan I think the balance of survey takers have not encountered a fighting rat.
@Liamo I love this so much. No matter how many times I see it, and know what it says, I still audibly laugh at it. Gold!
@Tupp_ed To be fair on the last question, it doesn’t say she was playing her best. I used to play badminton with someone on the national squad and I could often score points against him. Of course, he was playing with his left hand and not moving from the centre of the court and I was playing on a team with two other people (we still normally lost). I could probably score a point against Serena Williams if, say, she were blindfolded. And I got to serve.
@david_chisnall @Tupp_ed Also, I don't know enough about tennis to know if sometimes even the very best players sometimes concede a point no matter who the opponent is just because of the nature of the game.
(Indeed, I read that Williams "has averaged just over one double fault per match" and doesn't that mean a shop window mannequin would score an average of one point in a match against her? But maybe that's only if you're trying for the best serve possible.)
@Tupp_ed well, wolves not having fists i bet the men would do ok with the fist part of the fight. the problem would be bringing fists to a tooth fight. and overlooking that "an adult wolf" doesn't come alone.