Can I get your Number?
Survey data in an era of fearmongering
I’m warning you, today’s newsletter is very data heavy. I honestly am a little bit salty about these topics and they have been bothering me for a while, so it’s time to share my thoughts on it. Don’t worry, if you disagree with me we can still be friends but only if you drop off a quiche every now and then.
Family Slice: A Weekend Without the Little Muffins
Our little ones are out of town this weekend. For those who don't know me, my "babies" are 4 and 8, and yes, I still call them babies. It's a bit weird, I admit, but I also call all dogs puppies, I mean have you ever seen puppy faces?
This child-free weekend meant we could indulge in activities we normally can't do together. We cheered on a friend at a local CrossFit competition... TOGETHER (she placed 1st by the way, I only hang out with winners jk jk)! It's so refreshing to share these experiences instead of tag-teaming our parental duties. We also hit up our local queer bar and danced the night away. When I say we danced, I mean we rolled home at 2 AM, and I found myself nibbling on a Nutella sandwich in bed because, lo and behold, there was still bread and Nutella right next to me. Talk about a recipe for college flashbacks!
What struck me most about our night out - besides the fact that every queer person seems to have memorized the entire Chapel Roan songbook - was the freedom to express affection without drawing unwanted attention. In the early stages of my transition, holding my wife's hand in public often invited stares because I was visibly transgender. It was a tough period to rise above, but we persevered. Later, as my transition progressed, we'd still get looks, but this time because we were two women holding hands. So, being in a queer bar felt truly liberating. It was like finding the perfect blend of ingredients in a long-sought recipe - everything just fit together beautifully.
This Week’s Special: Separating the Dough From the Batter.
UMAS Amherst released a poll a while ago comparing the favorability of Project 2025 between June and July. The results may be surprising to those living in progressive echo chambers.
Let me be clear and state this out loud (metaphorically) so ya’ll know where I stand: Trump's agenda is called Agenda47 and not Project 2025. I'll admit, the rhetoric initially got me too. I first heard about Project 2025 online and assumed it was synonymous with Trump's plans. However, after fact-checking myself, I discovered that while there's certainly some overlap, these are two separate recipes for America's future.
I specifically was interesting in fact checking myself because I couldn’t believe that a plan that wants to ban pornography could be endorsed by a person who settled with a porn star. Or do we all believe that Trump doesn’t watch porn somehow? Around the same time, a Semafor article popped up, reporting that Trump, on record, stated he doesn't endorse Project 2025. I quickly accepted that I rushed to conclusion too quickly and whenever the conversation came up, I tried to reason with my interlocutors. And boy, did that stir up a hornet's nest! I had no idea that distinguishing between Trump and Project 2025 would be seen as political blasphemy.
Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 in December 2023, blaming pro-life activists for midterm election losses. His campaign managers, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, essentially stated that if it doesn't come from Trump's mouth, it's not Trump's stance. I know candidates can say whatever they want but it just doesn’t add up.
Then there’s the UMAS data.
The above data shows a net favorability rating of -23 for Project 2025 among Americans and -9 among MAGA Republicans. Of course, some nuance is required for the MAGA republicans. While there’s a 9 point decrease, there is still a +1 favorability. What I found more Interesting was that non-MAGA Republicans' favorability of Project 2025 plummeted from -2 in June to -20 in July, a significant 18-point decrease. I reckon the title of the UMAS research says it all “Americans Widely oppose ‘Project 2025’ according to new UMAS AMHERST Poll”
I often hear the argument that while Project 2025 isn't officially Trump's agenda, it's a ready-to-implement package for a potential second term. The reasoning is that there's too much overlap between Trump's ideas and Project 2025. I don’t want to come off as too skeptical, but I just find it hard to believe that anyone went through 900+ pages of the project. Even Claude, my LLM of choice, was like “I don’t think so, cut it down in smaller pieces.”
I read it with my academic method (read: scanned through it) and I found a highly disturbing transition plan with an even more disturbing introduction. I think we agree on this one. What I didn’t see was how the plan was implementable and to be honest it kinda felt like when the Green New Deal was first introduced (in pushback, not in substance). I admit, I find the Green New Deal pretty compelling but in essence it was more of an ambitious plan than it was a step by step implementation guide. So for me, that’s how I view Project 2025. Also, yes, there's concerning content, but no, it's not advocating for the eradication of trans people.
It's also curious (sorry, I may be salty) that there's almost no mention of the America First Transition Plan, a similar initiative to Project 2025, also staffed by former senior government workers with a similarly detailed transition agenda.
Let’s be clear here, saying "Donald Trump and Project 2025" is a Democratic talking point. This rhetoric has been highly effective as is shown in Trump not being able to get away from being associated with Project 2025. While it's been an effective talking point, I’m not super happy with it because it also stokes fear, especially among the trans community and that is really upsetting me. We don't need to speculate about whether or not Trump support project 2025 – we can acknowledge that Project 2025 is unsettling and at the same time also acknowledge that, like the UMAS data shows, there’s no wide support for Project 2025.
Let me say this before I move on. If Trump wins a second term, our country will most definitely look different, just look at 13 years of Tory damage in the UK, but I also don’t believe that our country will cease to exist. Frankly, I'm relieved that the Harris-Walz campaign is focusing more on positivity lately than fear-mongering. After all, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
THE CRUST OF THE MATTER: SIFTING THROUGH THE CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM DEBATE
Did you notice the theme of today’s Sunday Brunch? It’s data! I told ya’ll last week that I’m obsessed with data. No, I’m not a data scientist (although I’m strongly considering getting a PhD is Philosophy with a specialition in data analysis and polarization) but I do believe that data can dispel a lot of misconceptions. So in today’s Crust of the matter I’m going off menu (you see what I did there?) a bit and won’t talk about the bible directly but instead will talk about Christian Nationalism.
Again, let me say it right out of the gate - Christian Nationalism may be scary, it may be a threat to our democracy, but there’s not data to suggest that Christian nationalism is growing, gaining traction, or has any more supporters than flat earthers have. Ready?
Very similar to Project 2025, I started noticing this trend on IG that many of my progressives peers claim that Christian Nationalism is the largest threat to our society? Just to clarify, if we mean a Gilead type of nation then yeah - I agree, Christian Nationalism is an enormous threat. But if we mean that there’s an unstoppable snowball of Christian Nationalism coming at us, I disagree. Interestingly enough my peers and I cite the same data - I just use a different methodology.
Let’s look at the PRRI data that is so often mentioned.
At first glance, it seems to indicate that 10 percent of Americans are adherents of Christian Nationalism. While that’s not incorrect to conclude, this 10 percent figure needs some context. PRRI never asked people to self-identify in these categories; instead, they assigned these categories based on five questions:
The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.
U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.
The responses to these questions helped PRRI categorize groups as shown in the graph. This is standard practice for data collection and analysis. Here's how they divided the groups:
Christian Nationalism Adherents (Score 0.75–1): Overwhelmingly agree or completely agree with the statements. This group includes 10% of Americans.
Christian Nationalism Sympathizers (Score 0.5–0.74): Majority agree but less likely to completely agree. This group includes 19% of Americans.
Christian Nationalism Skeptics (Score 0.01-0.49): Majority disagree but less likely to completely disagree. This group includes 39% of Americans.
Christian Nationalism Rejecters (Score 0): Completely disagree with all 5 statements. This group includes 29% of Americans.
If you’re interested in a more detailed breakdown:
It’s important to understand that Christian Nationalism was defined by the above five questions. So where does that leave us? If you’re a progressive Christian that believes that being Christian is important part of being an American, then you are put in the adherents group. Likewise, if you’re a conservative Christian that doesn’t believe that God called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society, you may be part of rejecters group. Again, this is not bad data on PRRI’s behalf, they made a decision to ask these questions to get a full picture of what Christian nationalism.
To be honest, looking at these questions doesn’t make me very afraid of Christian nationalism. I think some Muslims would answer the same for a Muslim version of this data - it’s kinda how democracy works. Also, 63% of Americans are Christian, aren't we already a Christian nation? I mean, the only two presidents that were not affiliated with a Christian Denomination were Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.
Also of note is that we don’t really know what is meant with “Christian Values.” If you’d ask me if I agree with the notion that America should be guided by Christian values, I’d need some more context. If the answer is no murder, taking care of the widow and the orphan, forgiving debt after 7 years… I’m kinda of a fan! Does that make me a Christian Nationalist? But on the other hand, if “Christian Values” mean anti abortion, fuck no!
Perhaps a more interesting piece of data is a comparative research that was done by Pew in October 2022 and February 2024. There is a lot of data to go through but I specifically found this entry interesting:
Let’s break this down:
45% of Americans in September 2022 have heard of Christian Nationalism.
Of that group 5% had a favorable view of Christian Nationalism.
45% of Americans In February 2024 have heard of Christian Nationalism.
Of that group 5% had a favorable view of Christian Nationalism.
That 5% should increase in order for it to be a threat. It didn’t.
On the contrary, the group of people with awareness has grown (don’t know enough to answer group) and the group that was unfavorable has increased. If anything, the data suggest that the Christian Nationalism’s relevance has decreased. While my conclusion may be unsatisfactory, for me it beats the vitriolic narrative that “our country is under attack.” I don’t believe this fear mongering is helpful and I’ll even go a step further, I believe that most of the people that believe that God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society (note: dominion, not domination) are good people.
BYTES
Let’s finish up my data analysis spree with something shorter and lighter… wait, the following numbers may actually be worrisome haha.
Did you know that 9% of Americans also believe that vaccines contain microchips, 10% believe that the earth is flat, 12% believes that NASA didn’t land on the moon, and 8% doesn’t believe that the earth is billions of years old?
I KNOW RIGHT?
You may be tempted to think that it’s mostly boomers that believe that but think again. About 12% of GenZ believes that vaccinations implant microchips - I guess those anti-vaxer TikToks are successful for a reason. But my biggest shock was that OVER 20% OF MILLENNIALS AND 15% OF GENZ BELIEVE THAT NASA DIDN’T LAND ON THE MOON!
“Ok boomer” has completely lost its meaning for me now haha.
Pie to Go
📈 Come think of it, my data driven week may be because I did a massive clean up of one of my client’s books. Like the whole shebang: new chart of accounts, classes, connecting budgets, and fixing mistakes. Last week I dreamt data (and I also dreamt that I couldn’t hit the ball in volleyball, weird) and to be honest, it makes me feel calm. Data always has that effect on me.
🏋🏽♀️ Seeing my friend compete in the local CrossFit competition has gotten me even more… pumped? I already started going to the gym 4x a week and I’m going to see if I will be able to maintain it and then go to 5 days a week. I think I caught the gym bug. Me, of all people!
😱 Speaking of CrossFit - did ya’ll see how the Games ended last week? Serbian athlete Lazar Dukic, 28, died during the competition. He was a strong swimmer and from what I understand a Water Polo player but he tragically died during the swim event. His brother competed with him and after he finished swimming started to get worried that his brother didn’t make it. The Games are one of my favorite sports to watch and I can’t believe that this wasn’t prevented.