#perryundem

[rapeculturerealities]

The Kavanaugh Hearings 'Increased Hostile Sexism' in America

They also influenced the 2018 midterms, according to a new survey.

People thought Ford told the truth

By a margin of sixteen points, according to PerryUndem. That number had risen by nine points, since Quinnipiac conducted a poll immediately after the hearing. PerryUndem's data also suggests that half of voters thought Kavanaugh lied under oath about his conduct when he was a teenager. As a reference, the firm cites Gallup's report suggesting that Anita Hill's 1991 testimony that Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her actually made people support him more. After the testimony, 58 percent of Americans said they were in favor of the Senate confirming Thomas and just 30 percent were opposed to his confirmation.

The hearing influenced the 2018 midterms

Those who felt unfavorably toward Justice Kavanaugh were motivated to vote for Democratic candidates for U.S. House of Representatives, "above and beyond typical factors, such as party affiliation," PerryUndem concludes.

While feeling favorably toward Justice Kavanaugh also influenced voting for the Republican candidate, 50 percent of voters thought about "disproportionate representations of power in government" and were twice as likely to vote Democrat as a result.

Republican men "reverted" in their views toward women

Specifically, the Kavanaugh hearing made Republican men more sexist. The hearing caused "increased hostile sexism" among voters, according to PerryUndem. In 2016, 44 percent of Republican men agreed that most women interpret "innocent remarks or acts as being sexist," according to PerryUndem. That number rose to 47 percent in 2017 and, after Kavanaugh, is now at 68 percent.

According to the firm's data, fewer than half of Republican men consider sexism a problem in our society. That number is way down from 63 percent in 2017.

Republican men are also less likely to believe women alleging sexual harassment

In 2017, 80 percent of Republican men were more likely to believe women who made allegations of sexual harassment or sexual assault over the men denying the allegations. After Kavanaugh, that number dropped to 59 percent.

"Hostile sexism is correlated with believing Justice Kavanaugh's denial," according to PerryUndem. "About seven in ten respondents who say they believe Justice Kavanaugh agree that, 'most women interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist.'"

Republican women are more skeptical of male leadership

There is one hopeful bit of data to come from PerryUndem's survey. According to the firm, Republican women may have been affected by the hearings differently than Republican men. In 2016, 31 percent of Republican women felt men made better politicians than women. After Kavanaugh, that number dropped to 11 percent.

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[thesociologicalcinema]

1 in 3 Black adults has had brown water come out of their taps at home. - 35% has had brown water come out of the taps at home. - 29% has had water that smelled unsafe from the taps at home. - 35% has had to boil water at home before drinking it. - 55% said yes to any. Source: Perry Undem Research/Communication

[thesociologicalcinema]

Do you think our society is a patriarchy? A patriarchy is when men have larger shares of power than women across systems in society, such as in government and business.

After hearing a definition, 64% of respondents think our society is a patriarchy.

Who do you think has more positions of power in the federal government?

Republican and independent men are more likely to see gender disparities in positions of power in the federal government than they were in December 2016.

Source: "The Immediate, Short-term, and Long-term Effects of the Kavanaugh Hearings on the Electorate." Results from a National Survey of Voters. PerryUndem, April 15, 2019

[thesociologicalcinema]

Majority of Black adults see inequities at the core of systems in our society. "Think about the systems in our society, such as school systems, health care, housing, food, banking and the government. In general, do you think these systems are set up to: give White people more opportunities than Black people give Black people more opportunities than White people, or give Black and White people equal opportunities?" Source: PerryUndem

[thesociologicalcinema]

Four in ten respondents say they have heard someone use the term "patriarchy" in the past year. College-educated respondents and women ages 18 to 44 are most likely to say they have heard the term recently.

About 6 in 10 voters say it is important to them personally that there are equal numbers of men and women in positions of power in society. Republican men and Democratic men are mirror opposites of each other.

Source: "The Immediate, Short-term, and Long-term Effects of the Kavanaugh Hearings on the Electorate." Results from a National Survey of Voters. PerryUndem, April 15, 2019

[thesociologicalcinema]

Most voters say men and women generally make equally good political leaders.

Surprisingly, just a small majority of voters (59%) says male and female politicians are equally likely to pass laws that help the largest share of Americans. One in three (32%) says women politicians are more likely to pass laws benefiting the most people, nearly five times the proportion who says men are more likely (7%).

Source: "The Immediate, Short-term, and Long-term Effects of the Kavanaugh Hearings on the Electorate." Results from a National Survey of Voters. PerryUndem, April 15, 2019 

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Five things to know about the deceptive anti-abortion poll by The Polling Company released ahead of the March for Life

Anti-abortion group Students for Life of America (SFLA) released a new poll ahead of the 2019 March for Life protest alleging that millennials now overwhelming support anti-choice positions. Right-wing media have hyped the poll, but they have failed to note the extent to which SFLA set up the survey to present a favorable outcome. In fact, the poll demonstrates just how much misinformation the anti-choice movement has to present in order to get most millennials to agree with anti-abortion views.

Julie Tulbert at Media Matters For America: 

Anti-abortion group Students for Life of America (SFLA) released a new poll ahead of the 2019 March for Life protest alleging that millennials now overwhelming support anti-choice positions. Right-wing media have hyped the poll, but they have failed to note the extent to which SFLA set up the survey to present a favorable outcome. In fact, the poll demonstrates just how much misinformation the anti-choice movement has to present in order to get most millennials to agree with anti-abortion views.

SFLA, which oversees student chapters of anti-abortion groups across the country, released a poll on January 13 claiming to represent millennials’ “views on abortion, Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood.” SFLA’s poll focused on millennials, who it defined as 18-34 years old, because they are both “the largest voting bloc in America” and allegedly “the target market of abortion vendors.”

Polling on abortion has always been notoriously complicated, and support for both abortion rights and anti-choice restrictions has frequently been shown to depend heavily on how certain questions are asked. As Tresa Undem, founder and partner at the public opinion research firm PerryUndem, wrote for Vox, most “standard measures used to report the public’s views on abortion ... don’t capture how people really think” about the issue, but rather measure a binary viewpoint of right or wrong, legal or illegal. Conducting accurate polling on abortion requires asking questions “in a more real and accurate way” that takes into account “how people actually experience abortion.” When polls use real-life examples, audiences report greater support for abortion access, and new polling from PerryUndem (albeit from a broader audience than just millennials) shows “voters' support for abortion rights is as high as we have seen in years: 73% of voters do not want Roe v. Wade overturned and 67% say abortion should be legal in ‘all’ or ‘most’ cases.”

SFLA’s poll not only lacks consideration of real-life scenarios, but it explicitly inserted anti-abortion misinformation with the goal of influencing respondents’ opinions. In a memo released alongside the poll, SFLA explained that questions originated with the group’s “own experience and conversations on campuses” and were intended to influence and measure “changes in attitude on subjects such as Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood both before and after participants were provided the real facts.” As a result, the poll attempted to measure views on these topics by first asking a baseline question about respondents’ views on Roe and Planned Parenthood, and then asking their views again “after learning” a series of right-wing talking points about abortion and Planned Parenthood, which SFLA calls “real facts.” In other words, SFLA measured how much anti-abortion misinformation respondents had to be presented with before they adopted more anti-choice views on abortion and Planned Parenthood.

Given that SFLA’s poll promotes many right-wing myths as “real facts,” it’s unsurprising that right-wing outlets ran with the results. Breitbart News proclaimed that the poll “found that 70 percent of millennials support limits on abortion” while The Washington Examiner said in its daily health care newsletter that the poll “found that only 7 percent of those polled supported both allowing abortion without any exceptions and using government funding to pay for them” -- a position which The Gateway Pundit erroneously characterized as “the Democratic Party platform.” The College Fix similarly claimed “a plurality of millennials supports the full reversal of Supreme Court decisions that enshrined abortion on demand until fetal viability” once “survey participants were told exactly what Roe v. Wade” supposedly allows. SFLA President Kristan Hawkins later went on Eternal Word Television Network’s News Nightly to talk about the poll and make the skewed claim that millennials “lean politically liberal on almost every issue out there -- except abortion” because they “see abortion as violence.”

Other anti-abortion groups quickly began promoting the SFLA poll, with Susan B. Anthony List, the March for Life, and the Family Research Council all tweeting about it. Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins wrote about the poll for The Daily Signal, claiming that “7 in 10 support restrictions on abortion, with 42 percent opposing abortion ‘broadly.’ That’ll come as a shock to the Democrats’ system, which is betting most of its credibility on a surprisingly pro-life age group.”

Read the full story at MMFA.