The 27%: A Public Service Announcement

As we progress in this season of political inanity, crazy ass news, and just general WTF-iveness, we’re all going to see a lot of opinion polls, and we’re all often going to express shock or dismay over how many people have signed onto whatever notion that we ourselves think is insane, provably factually incorrect, or just generally brain-dead stupid.

Yay, election years.

In those moments, we’ll express – privately or publicly – our pessimism about the general direction of the country, perhaps of Western civilization. We’ll mock, we’ll shout, we’ll shake our heads over the idea that some of these people actually vote or are otherwise taken seriously.

(Note: this R&K is not about any one set of political or personal views. It is also not about any mass of citizenry other than that of the United States. If you read partisanship here, that’s a flaw in your own wiring, and I hope you deal with it.)

You can rest easy however, my fellow Americans. Because the 27% are on the case.

The theory goes like this: any proposal, no matter how dangerous, idiotic, or insane, will typically find at least 27% polling support nationally among Americans. You can count on it. That’s the floor, as close to unanimous rejection as the American public typically gets. To get much below that, there has to be some sort of shock to the national system (for example, Bush polled at around 20% in his last months in office, but at the time, banks were collapsing). On a normal sunny day, however, 27% national polling means a collective “fuck no, never” in America.

One caveat – this is my own theory, nothing endorsed by the punditry or academia, so feel free to ignore it (as I’m sure plenty will). But I think if you look at polls closely enough, you’ll see the pattern in action for yourself.

Don’t you think it’s time to use nuclear weapons in our ongoing conflict with Quebec? 27% will say yes.

Do you think we should replace the Executive Branch of the federal government with a petting zoo? 27% says yes!

Do you think sentient aardvarks are conspiring in subterranean caverns to impose their evilness on America? 27% says yep, and it’s time we got right on that shit.

Watch the polls. Seriously, that’s the floor.

The 27% is a combination of a number of factors, I think. Some people, I think 73% of us will agree, are simply knuckle-dragging stupid or mentally ill. Others aren’t paying attention, have no idea what’s going on in the world, and so don’t really know what’s being asked or what they’re answering. Still others are big on groupthink, and so will say what they think all their friends would say. And there’s always a not-insignificant portion of folk that will go with the crazy option simply for novelty sake – they just want to watch the world burn, basically.

Most of all, though, polling questions almost always have an emotional spin to them. Reputable pollsters at least try their best to eliminate leading biases from their methods, but it’s not an exact science, and people are remarkably good at detecting what answer a question sort of expects. There’s almost always a manipulation variable in there.

The other important thing to understand and remember about the 27% is that they aren’t a monolithic bloc, so they don’t really all agree on anything. They’re just the collective statistical blip of a poll. They’re not a freaking movement.

So as this political season continues its long, grueling slog, take comfort in things like 70% disapproval ratings, 30%-says-okay polls, and things like that. They’re not signs of alarming trends. Rather, they’re signs that it is still possible for our country to all agree on the basics – at least, among those willing and able to pay attention.

In America, 27% (or 73%, if you prefer) is generally as good as it gets.