What does the public think? To find out, we conducted a nationally representative opinion poll using a validated survey tool.
First, we tried calling the public, but the public was busy.
. . . Still no answer from the public. Hmm. Maybe the public is on vacation. Should we reach out to one of the public’s friends? (Does the public have friends?)
Honestly, the public has been acting super weird lately. When we asked the public last month if it supported single-payer health care, sixty-five per cent of the public said yes and eighteen per cent of the public Snapchatted us a picture of a cat wearing a shark costume. When we asked the public if it thought federal funds should be used for stem-cell research, twenty-three per cent of the public said no and fourteen per cent of the public repeated our question back to us in a mocking voice and then didn’t even answer it.
Is the public O.K.? Maybe the public is mad at us. We’ll send the public a text saying “r u mad at me? :(”
All right—sent. God, the public makes us feel insecure. The public is always changing its mind. Like, yesterday, the public was all, “Pokémon Go LOL!!! #Hamilton.” But today the public isn’t even responding to our texts.
Should we really care what the public thinks? The public can be super mean. Last year, when we asked the public if it supported refugee-resettlement programs, forty-three per cent of the public said yes and twenty-nine per cent of the public kicked us in the shins.
That wasn’t even the worst, though. When we asked the public who it was planning to vote for in 2020, twenty-three per cent of the public was undecided and seventy-six per cent of the public punched us in the face. When we asked the public if it supported stricter gun laws, forty-seven per cent of the public dug a hole in the ground, crawled into the hole with a rifle, and didn’t emerge for several weeks.
Just e-mailed the public to see how it feels about religion. No response yet. (Weird that the public didn’t set an out-of-office message—maybe the public isn’t on vacation, after all.)
It’s not always like this. Sometimes the public is pretty consistent. When we asked the public last year if abortion should be covered by employer-sponsored health-insurance plans, a hundred per cent of the public responded by backing out of the room, shrieking. (The public seems to really hate our questions about abortion.)
Where did we go wrong? Maybe the public is tired of being asked its opinion. When we asked the public if it thought that social-media echo chambers were deepening partisan divides, twenty-six per cent of the public openly picked its nose in front of us and then walked away.
Our survey tool utilized random question ordering to minimize response bias. Samples were stratified by demographic characteristics.
But, seriously, the public is being such a dick right now. Would it kill the public to ask us some stuff, given how often we check in with it? Like, for instance, nine per cent of us have a November birthday, but when was the last time the public remembered?
We should have seen this coming a long time ago. In 2016, when we asked the public who it was planning to vote for in the Presidential election, seventy-one per cent of the public said they were voting for Hillary Clinton. But then, on Election Day, forty-six per cent of the public shivved us in the ribs.
Yet we forged ahead! When we asked the public how it thought Donald Trump was doing a year into his Presidency, forty-nine per cent of the public used our own hand to slap us in the face, while saying “stop hitting yourself,” over and over and over again.
Full disclosure: response rates for this study were low. Ninety-one per cent of the public declined to participate in our survey, citing “time constraints,” which is weird, because we definitely saw a picture of the public out partying on Instagram later that day.
