How polling can be deceptive... Support for Florida's bill banning discussion of LGBT issues for grade schoolers depends on how you frame the question.

 

Protesters rally in Miami. Fox News/AFP.

Polling on a Florida bill that would ban age inappropriate discussion of LGBT issues for elementary age students varies greatly depending on how you word the question. Fox News. A widely spread ABC News poll said that 6 in 10 Americans would oppose Florida's bill, which the media has falsely described as a "Don't Say Gay" bill. However, the poll oversampled LGBT Ameircans and left out that the bill would only apply to very young students. The law would only ban age inappropriate discussion for students between kindergarten and 3rd grade, which would mean the bill would only apply to teaching 4 to 9 year olds about the issue. Other polls, including Politico/Morning Consult and Daily Wire/Lucid found much higher support of the bill with the former finding 51% support and the later finding 64% support. Those polls worded the question so that it was clear that the bill would only affect very young children. 

My Comment:

This is why it is so important to question polling. Poll construction is just as important to any other factor when it comes to polls. If you ask the wrong question or word the question wrong you can get totally different results. And it also depends on who you ask. This poll is just the latest example of a polling company doing bad polling and getting the result they wanted, not the one that was real. 

It's also important to note how badly the ABC poll was misrepresenting reality here. The bill never was going to totally ban discussion of LGBT issues in schooling, it was always going to be limited to elementary aged school children. There had been looser language that could have been interpreted that way but the language of the bill was cleaned up so it was clear that it would only apply to 3rd graders and under. It is not surprising that the Politico and Daily Wire polls got more balanced results since they worded the polling different. 

Does that mean that the other two polls are infallible? No, all polls are flawed in some way. But I think the fact that they were more honest about what they were asking means that they are probably closer to reality than the ABC poll. However, I do suspect that the Daily Wire poll might have had similar issues to the ABC poll in terms of sampling bias, so you shouldn't blindly believe it either. 

ABC totally changed the context of the bill. I know for me personally it would have changed my opinion of the bill. I don't think it's inappropriate for teenagers to get some kind of knowledge of what homosexuality is, as long as it is done in an appropriate way, such as in a health class. But I also don't think that pre-pubescent children need that at all, since it isn't relevant to them in any way. 

And keep in mind that much of the LGBT "teaching" that we have seen over the years has been extremely sexually explicit. There is a major difference between teaching what the difference is between gay, lesbian and bisexual and much of the stuff that is currently being taught. There is absolutely no reason for a 3rd grader to learn what a strap-on dildo is, but I have seen books that have explained that and how they work. 

Also keep in mind that much of the objection to this kind of education is focused on the T part of LGBT. People are a lot more tolerant of gays and lesbians but are genuinely afraid of their children being brainwashed into being transgender. I know the LGBT community thinks it is blasphemy to say that anyone can be recruited into being transgender but that's not how most Americans feel. 

I don't think that the science backs up claims that a small child can determine his or her gender, or sexuality for that matter. Children often clam to be different things but in most cases it is just a phase they go through, not an actual statement of fact. Pre-pubescent children aren't really going to understand gender issues and they will do what they will think pleases adults, and if everyone tells them they are transgender they will probably end up believing it. 

Regardless though, my main point wasn't to debate the merits of the bill in Florida, but to set out another example of how easily it is to manipulate polling. Keep that in mind whenever you see a poll, no matter the issue. I've seen the same thing with election polling and polling on other hot button issues, such as the Coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine. It's a very good thing to not take polling at face value.