25% Don't Know US Declared Independence From UK

[DamianTV]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2010501/Independence-day-Only-58-Americans-know-US-declared-independence-1776.html#ixzz1QzXQSQFd


Come Monday fireworks will light up the sky across America and many will enjoy time off work for Independence Day.
But shockingly nearly a quarter of Americans don't appear to know who exactly they are celebrating independence from - for the second year in a row.

While 76 per cent correctly said Great Britain, 19 per cent were unsure, and 5 per cent mentioned another country.

(more on link...)

No wonder the Shadowy Puppet Masters can get away with this crap! Ok, back to Dancin With The Starz!

[UK4Paul]

Can we have it back, please? ;)

[vita3]

90% of American don't know British Petroleum is BP & they are the primary reason Iran is our enemy.

[newyearsrevolution08]

90% of American don't know British Petroleum is BP & they are the primary reason Iran is our enemy.

I thought they changed their bp to another name at some point, could be wrong but then again I haven't seen a bp around here in forever.

Iran is our enemy because they don't like dancing with the stars.

[MelissaWV]

Never trust a poll.

It would seem this one keeps mentioning the "date" of the Declaration, but then cites people as not knowing the year. The article is pretty poorly-written from that standpoint (notice how they repeat the "more men knew the answers than women" detail).

The article doesn't cite its methods for taking the poll. This sounds very much like the "Jaywalking" skit on Jay Leno where he used to find people on the street and ask them simple questions, then laugh at the results. You never see the people that know the answers.

This just in: 100% of snarky British articles written on the subject do not know how to spell.


Last year the same Marist poll showed that 26 per cent of Americans did knot know the answer.

* * *

I actually did go and check out the methodology link (I had to go through a couple of sites to get to it).

They randomly dialed cellphones to get 25% of their results lol I think I would have probably thought that was a joke. 80% of those they polled were registered voters, but I guess they're taking the person's word for it since that had nothing to do with the selection of the phone numbers. For some reason they decided to leave out a couple of states. Their pains to make the phone numbers representative of the USA (by region) seem to have been forgotten when it comes to just about any other demographic. It looks more like they were hoping one region would be dumber than another.


This survey of 1,003 adults was conducted on June 15th through June 23rd, 2011. Adults 18 years of age and older residing in the continental United States were interviewed by telephone.

Please note that the country question also names "Great Britain" and doesn't seem to accept another answer. I'm pretty sure I would have said "the British," which they might have accepted, but would they have accepted "England"? How about "those jerky Red Coats that supposedly sounded just like you"?

To play Devil's Advocate on the year, there were a lot of kiddos who'd mix up the DoC and Constitution years, and there were also a lot who seemed to think we declared independence before we revolted against the British (which would kind of make sense if you think about it). This is usually reinforced by moronic schoolteachers who like to talk about a "symbolic" declaration by rising up and going to war.

I still am wondering why the poll says "date" insted of "year," because that can also cause problems. If you ask the precise date of something, people are far more likely to answer "Not Sure." Even if people said "July 4," they would be wrong (given the phrasing) since the declaration itself took place a couple of days before the document was signed.

So, yeah... don't trust polls :p