What do Americans really believe? It turns out nobody really knows.
That’s because the typical methods of finding out—polls, surveys, focus groups—all have a serious flaw: They tend to elicit less-than-honest answers. Regardless of whether the designers intend it, participants feel like they’re taking a test, and they adjust their feelings to give the “right” answer.
Political correctness, party loyalty, and other factors drive many respondents to hide their true feelings. About two-thirds of Americans believe that most people lie in political surveys, according to one 2020 poll.
As a result, politicians and the media constantly misread the actual views of the public. Shallow spasms of groupthink are mistaken for deep shifts in the popular will. And real, slow-moving changes in American values are often missed entirely, until they manifest themselves in radical new political movements.
We at The Free Press want to shine some light into the shadowy corners of Americans’ private views. To try to get a more accurate sense of what Americans believe, we partnered with Populace, a Boston-based think tank that developed a method of gauging respondents’ “private” opinions on sensitive topics.
From now through November, we’re partnering with Populace to conduct a series of polls designed to get close to gauging what Americans truly believe—and the size of the gap between those true beliefs and publicly stated views. We’re calling it The Honesty Project, and the aim is to deliver a better representation of what your neighbors are thinking on the biggest issues of the day.
How will we do that? The key is a system Populace uses to ask sensitive questions along with a group of less controversial ones, and allow respondents to signal their answer clearly without stating it directly. (You can read more about the full methodology here.)
