Military Still Americans' Top-Rated Institution

[CADsortaGUY]

The police, organized religion, banks, and the presidency also receive high ratings today, but the military continues to be the top-rated institution of the 15 included in the latest Gallup Poll.

Now I did a Poll here using the same question and asked it of the Institutions ranked highest by Americans polled by Gallup.
"my" poll

Results comparison:

how much confidence you, yourself, have in the Military?
A Great Deal/ Quite a lot = Gallup 75% / ATP&N 69%

how much confidence you, yourself, have in the Police?
A Great Deal/ Quite a lot = Gallup 64% / ATP&N 47%

how much confidence you, yourself, have in the Church/Organized Religion?
A Great Deal/ Quite a lot = Gallup 53% / ATP&N 27%

how much confidence you, yourself, have in the Banks?
A Great Deal/ Quite a lot = Gallup 53% / ATP&N 64%

how much confidence you, yourself, have in the Presidency?
A Great Deal/ Quite a lot = Gallup 52% / ATP&N 24%

Is anyone surprised by the differences? Any comments the two that were WAY off?

Thanks for taking part in my little experiment though, it was interesting to see how people were responding.

CkG

 

[maddogchen]

So....I guess only 24-27% of the people here are conservatives?:shocked: and the rest are liberals? thats if you follow the generalization that liberals don't support the president and hate religion while conservatives do.

 

[MidasKnight]

Interesting ... but not surprising to me though.

I do enjoy reading this group

 

[naddicott]

Gallup was presumably a random sample of US adults. Those who dropped into the P&N thread and opted to vote in the poll do not constitute a random sample of US adults. Even if one made the effort to take a random sample of forum members, I doubt the numbers would match up well with a nationwide random sample.

I doubt one could conclude this by the results of the poll, but I supsect the ATP&N crowd (of either affiliation) is of slightly higher intelligence on average than a random sample of the general populace. In the case of some of these questions, that additional intelligence (assuming that's the case) is less likely to explain the differences than the apparent uneven numbers of idealogues of each side that tend to vote in these sorts of "identify your affiliation" polls.

Interesting to see slightly higher levels of trust in banks than the general populace. Perhaps many people here are too young to remember the Savings and Loan scandal or haven't had the experience of applying for a large mortgage with a less than helpful loan officer. Or maybe people here use atms and internet banking more than the general public, and so don't have the same resentment that can foster while waiting forever in line with only a single slow-working human teller handling the whole line.

 

[datalink7]

Originally posted by: naddicott
I doubt one could conclude this by the results of the poll, but I supsect the ATP&N crowd (of either affiliation) is of slightly higher intelligence on average than a random sample of the general populace.

lol?

 

[lozina]

Originally posted by: maddogchen
So....I guess only 24-27% of the people here are conservatives?:shocked: and the rest are liberals? thats if you follow the generalization that liberals don't support the president and hate religion while conservatives do.

Not exactly, a better generalization is liberals don't trust the military- yet it was rated very high. SO base don that, I can say only 31% of the people here are liberals, and the rest are conservatives.

 

[Strk]

The issue isn't the military, it is the civilian leadership telling them what to do that causes problems