Lies, Damned Lies and Polls

The popular saying “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics,” was popularized by Mark Twain, but has also frequently incorrectly been attributed to both him and former British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. It has however often been used to discredit dubious statistics, and the popular manifestation of such in modern times – the poll or survey.

The poll is a popular marketing tool which has been used more deviously by politicians and lobby groups to influence a narrative, or completely mislead their unwary target audience. I recently came across one such attempt to deceive on Facebook which like all social media is the perfect staging ground for all kinds of treachery. But more about that later…

Avi Lewis is a digital creator on Facebook, but also claims to be a journalist, writes a blog under his own name in The Times of Israel. His content clearly distinguishes him as a self-appointed apologist for the State of Israel. As recently as March 21, this year he was still spreading the oft-repeated lies which have since been systematically debunked, of Hamas mass rapes, be-headings and baby killings manufactured by the Israeli propaganda machine to justify their mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza. He is fond of using dubious statistics in his pleadings:

72% of Palestinians found Hamas’ attack to be justified while a further 90% denied that the mass rapes, beheadings and baby-killings ever took place

Terror groups Islamic Jihad, al-Qassam brigades and al-Aqsa martyrs brigades received 75 – 90% approval ratings

90% of Palestinians surveyed say that coexistence with Israel is impossible

Avi appears to be a decent young man, who bears a vague resemblance to Eylon Levy, the official Israeli government spokesman who was recently suspended for apparently failing to pass on yet another pure unadulterated lie to his designated foreign target audience. Behind the suave, handsome exterior of Levy, resided a cool psychopathic liar who became infamous in the last five months for disseminating the most monstrous whoppers to justify Israel’s ongoing massacre of civilians in Gaza. I can’t say for certain that Avi has similar character traits, but he has potential.

Earlier in March, Avi posted this on Facebook:

The poll referenced by Avi was conducted by Harvard CAPS-Harris¹ and used a sample of 2,022 registered voters in the USA. The current population of the US is 341 317, 168 and climbing. That’s over three hundred and forty one million people to put it in simple words. The sample size mathematically, reflects the views of around 0.0005 percent of the population, assuming the views of everyone, including children are included, which I concede aren’t. Even so, excluding minors, the sample is still abysmally minuscule, and the most optimistic person could not possible accept that as representative of the US population.

But Avi, and others like him have been using these grossly misleading polls to convince their audiences that there is broad support for Israel in the current massacre being administered by the Israeli Defense Force in Gaza. Just last week , Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu used polls just like this, perhaps this very one, to hoodwink viewers on US National television into believing that his massacre of civilians in Gaza, is widely supported in the USA.

Polls are invariably carefully worded to mislead. This particular Harvard CAPS-Harris poll asks the loaded question “In this conflict do you support more Israel or more Hamas?” Given that most people, but especially Americans, are hardly disposed to voice willing and direct support for an organization that has been branded as terrorist, the 82 percent response in favor of Israel is not unexpected. If the question was instead “In this conflict do you support more Israel or more Palestine?” then I have a strong feeling that the responses, especially in the lower age categories would have been much higher in favor of Palestine. This simple amendment, no doubt would have given a more honest reflection of the will of the American people.

The second question regarding the avoidance of civilian casualties is also carefully selected to follow on from the sympathy already elicited in the first question. Those already voicing their support for Israel, would naturally tend to be accommodating of any actions undertaken by their chosen side.

Apart from the lack of representation which inadequately reflects the demographic diversity and heterogeneity of the population, there is the issue of self-selection bias which arises with small sample sizes, particularly in voluntary online surveys or opt-in polls. One notable example was the 2016 US Presidential Elections in which polling failed to predict the outcome in which Donald Trump won. Similarly, in the Brexit referendum, polls with smaller sample sizes failed to capture the true extent of public sentiment, leading to inaccurate forecasts of the vote outcome.

On a lighter note, the just released World Happiness Report for 2024 has Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden ahead of Israel as the top five happiest countries in the world. The report uses data from Gallup World Poll surveys for a three year period, with a sample size of 1000 from each country, for each year. While the sample size set off alarm bells in my head, it does not concern me as much as when the data is used for nefarious purposes as outlined above. Happiness levels are notoriously subjective, but if the results entice other countries lower down on the pecking order to become happier, I can’t complain.

What is of interest to me though, is that Israel, which is currently embroiled in perhaps the greatest moral outrage of our times, is occupying a happy fifth spot on that report. What are they so happy about?

1. Center for American Political Studies, The Harris Poll and Harris X ↩︎