Half of Americans anticipate a U.S. civil war soon
Source is apparently a preprint (that is, not peer-reviewed) uploaded here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.medrxiv.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;10.1101&#x2F;2022.07.15.22277693v1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.medrxiv.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;10.1101&#x2F;2022.07.15.22277693v...</a><p>&gt; Participants: Cross-sectional nationwide survey conducted May 13 to June 2, 2022; participants were adult members of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel.<p>8,620 respondents, but I don&#x27;t see how they were recruited or how potential bias was accounted for.<p>Given how weird some of the internet surveys have been in the past year, I don&#x27;t take singular polls all that seriously. These polls seem to end up extremely skewed toward subjects who overestimate small probabilities.<p>For a reality check, consider that 1&#x2F;8th of respondents said they would be willing to commit political violence themselves and 7.1% of respondents said they&#x27;d be willing to kill someone over politics.<p>&gt; 12.2% were willing to commit political violence themselves ″to threaten or intimidate a person,″ 10.4% ″to injure a person,″ and 7.1% ″to kill a person.″<p>And to cap it off, 4% of respondents were pretty sure they were going to kill someone soon:<p>&gt;  and 4.0% thought it at least somewhat likely that ″I will shoot someone with a gun.″<p>Yeah, I don&#x27;t think so. This feels like a survey of people who consume too much news and social media and have become increasingly disconnected from the reality on the ground.