Comment by 9x39
19 hours ago
>Most people are moderate on most issues. That's just statistics...and it's actually backed up by all sorts of polling.
When you zoom in on a small area, sure. But globally? Pick a card and you'd have to squint to say most people are moderate on most issues.
Examples:
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2015/11/18/global-support...
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/06/25/global-divide-...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/28/who-likes...
OK, the first link was about free speech, and the third was about "support for authoritarianism". Of all the issues you could possibly cherry-pick, those are amongst the ones where I'd expect the most extreme polarization (Survey people if they like ice cream and puppies, and hate murder, while you're at it.)
As for the second one (about homosexuality), the article tells a fairly nuanced story about polarization across countries, with rising overall support, and a lot of countries...in the middle. That bar chart mid-way down the article looks exactly like what I'd expect.
> When you zoom in on a small area, sure. But globally?
Yes. The bigger the population, the more I expect to see a bell curve. Central limit theorem.