Fox News Does Not Like This Poll

Mar 27

A poll by the Wall Street Journal found tepid support for the GOP’s culture war alongside a drop in patriotism and religiousity compared to Americans of the recent past.

by Evan Urquhart

five jets trailing clouds of white exhaust in front of an American flag. The jets are pointing down.

“The importance of patriotism and faith has dropped like a rock,” proclaimed the subhead of a Fox News story about a recent poll (conducted by the Wall Street Journal), which showed Americans are far less eager to describe themselves as patriotic or religious than they once were. This decline in religiosity and patriotism comes after decades of work by conservatives to make the Republican party synonymous with those two exact things.

According to the poll, only 39 percent of Americans say their religious faith is very important to them. Similarly, 38 percent say that patriotism is very important. While a hefty majority still find these things somewhat important, there’s been a large shift from similar polling in late 1990s, when both religion and patriotism were considered very important by more than 60 percent of the Americans polled.

The Wall Street Journal poll also found weak to nonexistant support for the culture war agenda that has become Fox’s bread and butter. While opposing racial diversity and obsessing about pronouns may be popular with their audience of aging gold bugs, it doesn’t seem to be shared by their fellow Americans. In one example, the poll found Americans are much more concerned about banning books than the possibility that children might be exposed to a book their parents don’t like.

screenshot from poll results: 61 percent say they are more concerned that schools may ban books that are educationally important vs 36 percent who are more concerned about schools teaching topics parents find inappropriate. — screenshot from WSJ/NORC poll

Fox did manage to find a soupçon of weak sauce amongst the polling results, highlighting a couple of results that showed large numbers of Americans (though not a majority) have somewhat unfavorable views on they/them pronouns and transgender rights.

Roughly 50 percent of respondents had a ver or somewhat unfavorable view of being asked to use transgender pronouns, while just 18 percent had a favorable view. 32 percent said they were neutral on the issue. — screenshot from Fox News

There is, of course, a long way to go to convince the roughly 99 percent of Americans who are not themselves transgender that transgender people deserve equality and respect. But at least support for trans people isn’t plummeting the way support for the traditional values of conservatism is!

public opinion pollsWall Street JournalFOXconservatism