elfs | (Reply)

From:

Not surprisingly, the trend becomes more...nuanced when other polling results are brought into the analysis:
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/12/31/hey-whos-up-for-a-contentious-new-poll-about-evolution/
"So, what’s it all mean? Gallup, YouGov, and Harris all see ~35 percent of GOPers backing evolution in some form and 55-60 percent favoring creationism; Gallup in particular found numbers along those lines all the way back in 2007, albeit with a bit more creationist support than recent polls. Pew’s numbers over time have deviated from that baseline wildly, so much so that not only do their 2009 figures show a majority of Republicans backing evolution, even their new 2013 numbers show the GOP as being comparatively more supportive of evolution than other pollsters do. That’s ironic since all the headlines yesterday were about Pew detecting a trend back towards creationism among Republicans. Even if that’s accurate, with a split of 43/48 between evolution and creation, Pew finds GOPers to be several points more sympathetic to evolution than other major poll outfits do. Maybe they’re just an outlier."

"...maybe this is a simpler partisan impulse, where contempt for the political worldview as personified by the president bleeds over into some people’s judgments about perennial cultural disputes too. Wouldn’t surprise me to find support for evolution among Democrats rising a few points once the next Republican president takes office. It’s a defensive impulse against a political opponent who’s taken power, whether that impulse is really justified or not."