Today I picked up a call from an 800 number, I tend to not do this, but I'm having internet issues and I wasn't sure if it was my provider. It wasn't. Instead it was this polling firm, and I'm a curious person so I decided to hear what the poll questions were. Among questions about if I think the Canadian economy is in a recession or not (people who know better than I do about this say we're still avoiding one), whether or not I have a COVID vaccination (of course), and few questions I've forgotten, they asked the following question:
"when raising children which of the following do you think is important to emphasize: -trust in science and experts -skepticism of experts and elites"
this is revealing. they've changed the verbiage between the two answers the first, science and experts, okay makes sense sure emphasize that science and experts probably know what they speak about. but the second then removes science from the equation entirely and now we're talking about experts and elites. Who are these elites and who tends to refer to elites? now, if you've been abreast of well, events of the past eight years, you may be familiar with how elites is generally a dogwhistle for the conspiracy theory that there is a group of people who control the world: media, banking, academia, the government, etc., from behind the scenes. An elite group who decide what happens in the world. Previously, and often still, referred to as a cabal. I'm hedging, but it's a conspiracy that Jews control the world, essentially. Is this polling firm using this term specifically because they are trying to determine who believes in this conspiracy? ... I'd doubt that given the other questions. It seems it's likely a cribbed term from a cursory knowledge of general news of the last decade, but a lack of understanding of what these terms mean and refer to. Additionally at the end of the poll they asked about the highest level education that I had and the options were: high school, CGEP or college, or university. Here, university tends to refer to a four-year degree, but not a graduate or post-graduate degree. That is also interesting.
It tells me they have an idea of who they want to be polling, and what data they want to receive. This is why you should look into whatever data you see harvested from a poll. What questions did they ask? Who was polled? How large is the sample size?
