Political Action: January 2017

If you were to look at my social media feed, it would be easy to think that everyone is politically active these days.

But I suspected that I live in a bubble. You may too.

So, because I am just a curious person, I decided to find out. I ran a broader population sample about political activity, and this is what I found.

Conclusion? Yep. I live in a bubble that doesn't truly reflect the broader American population when it comes to political activity.

What we know or can assume from my sampling:

• This is only a snapshot that records activity in the month of January 2017.
• Based on my recent experience, this sample likely skews slightly male, and a bit better educated than the actual US population; if anything, because of the education skew, these respondents are probably more likely to have engaged in some political activity than a truly representative sample
• In reality, more of the US population likely did nothing than this sample would indicate, for the above reason and because of basic human nature. When people respond to a survey, even an anonymous one, they sometimes will respond in ways that make themselves look better than reality. For example, if you eat dessert more often than not, on a survey you still might say you only have dessert twice a week. Thus, because of human nature, I designed the question carefully to have a "safe" response: "no, but I am planning to soon."  It was for people who haven't done anything but want to think they are the type that will (or at least present that way to me). But even with this "safe" response, I suspect actual activity levels are a bit lower than reported.

What we don't know:

• We don't know how respondents' activity levels have changed over time.  Was January 2017 an anomaly, typical, or part of a new trend?
• We don't know the political persuasion of respondents; if I were to make an educated guess, based on my fall 2016 sampling, I would assume about a quarter of respondents were conservative, a quarter moderate, a quarter liberal, and a quarter who just don't care about politics. But we still don't know if any of these groups were more likely than others to have been active in January (though it is likely pretty safe to assume that those who don't care have done nothing!).

What I'm interested in going forward:

• Will this change over time? To find out, asking the question regularly could make it a reasonably accurate measure of changes in base activity rates (and how much people care about what elected officials are doing). I honestly haven't decided if I will remeasure it, though.

What it means for museums:

• No idea. I don't have any data that tells me if politically active individuals are more or less likely to visit museums. I did this "flash" sample just because I was curious.

Does the result make sense?

• Probably. I'd estimate from this that at least 80% of Americans have done nothing (and won't do anything), maybe closer to 85%. According to American Generosity, a 2010 study by the Science of Generosity Initiative at Notre Dame, 87% of Americans had not participated in any political activity in the previous month. This result makes sense to me, as I would expect a January 2017 survey to find higher participation than a 2010 one.  As I already mentioned, however, it is unclear if my data represents any real, sustained change … but I can always resample to find out.

Note: The Pew Research Center ran surveys in 2008 and 2014 on civic and political participation, and at first glance, my data, as well as the data cited from American Generosity, doesn't seem to agree with Pew's data. I am a big fan of the Pew Research Center, and suspect the difference is in methodology. For now, I simply want to acknowledge that work is out there and that, if warranted, I'll dig in.