Never seen this poll before - 28% gay is "average" guess?

[dmallind]

Yes definitions are fluid, and yes self-reporting is questionable, but I have no clue why the answer to the question "what percentage of US adults do you guess are gay" is so often so very high. I wonder if the inferred definition is different from the standard - maybe people took it as "how many are open to some same-sex activity" (although that may be a bit low then imo). Since no survey variant of "are you gay" has ever gotten near this level (ro my knowledge - welcome corrections) I wonder why the disconnect. Wishful thinking? Irrational fear magnifying "enemies"? (but then why liberal guesses so much higher than con)? Could underreporting be THAT bad and this is closer to reality? Personally I'm not driven to either maximize or minimize any percentage beyond the silly hyper-low estimates of wishful-thinking fundies, but interested in where the perception of percentages comes from. Anybody more savvy on the history and context of this poll?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/147824/Adults-Estimate-Americans-Gay-Lesbian.aspx

[palm_to_forehead]

1. Is there any actual study other than the recent Gary Gates one?

Even the article you posted shows the error in that type of survey in the way people over estimate the percentage of african american and hispanics.

That old 10% Kinsey stat was always thrown around as if it's fact when even he was just SWAGing it.

[palm_to_forehead]

2. Crap

After actually reading the study, all the scientific answers you could want on the subject seem to be in it...

http://www3.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute/pdf/How-many-people-are-LGBT-Final.pdf

[dmallind]

3. I confess never read the Gates one till now

Quite interesting. It seems much more feasible but a tad low to me subjectively on overall percentage, especially when including bi's (although the activity percentages are probably more where my perceptions are coming from rather than identity chosen). Which still leaves us to ponder the perceptions from Gallup and why they differ. Your point about overestimating racial minorities is valid but unless I am mistaken isn't the overestimation usually correlated with antipathy? Clearly the Minutemen types think there are more illegals than most of us, and anti-Semites always overstate the Jewish population. Why then in this case would liberals overestimate the gay population much more than conservatives, while both grossly overestimate.

[palm_to_forehead]

5. I wouldn't agree that's alwasy due to hatred.

If I had to make a wild guess, I'd say liberals overestimate it because of a bias in the people liberals associate with.

[TheWraith]

4. To be fair, a SWAG is far better than a regular WAG.

And Kinsey's number has served fairly well as a ballpark figure for a long time; it's still quoted because no one can prove it wrong.

[BR_Parkway]

6. If you consider the number of people who have problems with same sex

attraction because they have never dealt with their own - I'm not really shocked at that number or that it's usually reported high. I think it's a bit of a slip on their part that they think so many others have those little secret feelings and that the ones they get mad at are those of us who "choose" to act on it and dare to be happy about it in the face of everyone else's condemnations.

It stems from that same root cause of homophobia and the desire to pass all these laws to make us control ourselves and act like they do. Seems like I saw a poll recently that was discussing the rise in number of guys identifying themselves as 'mostly straight' - and adding up "had done something with a member of same sex" as well as "have not done something but would" came out around 23%