Americans were asked "What percentage of American adults ____

People think that 1/5 americans are trans? Billionaire owned media really does shit in our brains, huh?

That struck me too. 1 in 5 are trans? Who are these people they polled?
- It doesn't surprise me. With how much focus there is on issues like trans athletes in the media and politics, people incorrectly assume the actual number of people "at issue" is in proportion. This is how we get state legislatures spending huge amounts of time creating legislation that will impact like three people.
- And these are the averages. Which means for every answer that accurately said 1%, someone said 39% (or two people said 30%)
  Which means they think if they know two other people, one of them must be trans. Or more likely, that entire cities of "others" (that they've never been to) must be trans.
- the people who answer polls
Definitely depends on the spaces they exist in, too. I only recently learned I was wrong about how many black people there are in the US. Turns out they're just "overrepresented" in the media I consume and I've lived most of my life in very diverse neighborhoods. Similarly, trans topics overrepresent the amount of trans people in a lot of online spaces and people tend to extrapolate when they only have all the data. I can see why a terminally-online individual would feel like there's a trans epidemic.
I mean, the way the internet talks I thought I was the only straight person left.

33% Atheist
27% Muslim
30% Jewish
58% Christian (41% being Catholic, so that's about 70% of all Christians)

This just proves that Americans do indeed have more people per capita.

Wait, atheism is that low in the US?? 38.9% of Australians indicated no religion at the last census, I knew we had more but never expected a whole order of magnitude difference!

That number is wrong.
28% of people in the US don't have a religion. People here just don't like the word atheist.
- "Don't have a religion" includes
  Atheists
  Agnostics
  Spiritual but not religious people
  Religious but unaffiliated people
  Saying "don't have a religion" equals atheist is like claiming that everyone who didn't vote for Trump or Harris is an anarchist.
- Not having a religion =/= atheist in surveys like this.
  Believing there is no god is still a belief. Not having a religion means you dont subscribe to any belief
Atheism still has a stigma associated with it here. Not sure now, but there were surveys less than 10 years ago saying that Americans were less likely to vote for an atheist than for a convicted felon (and this was before Trump!). Other polls often use the term "Nones" to refer to people who don't affiliate with a major religion, but that tends to include atheists, agnostics, areligious people, and some others thrown in there.
There's a good explainer here: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2024/01/24/religious-nones-in-america-who-they-are-and-what-they-believe/
That poll has 17% of Nones as atheist, which would be about 5% of the population, just above the 3% in the chart from OP. Although I bet part of the "agnostics" are agnostic atheists, but don't use the term. That being said, Pew also has this page: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/age-race-education-and-other-demographic-traits-of-us-religious-groups/#age
That shows that people under 50 are way different. 73% atheist of 69% None is about 50%, which means that a full half of Americans under 50 identify as atheist. So, a BIG generational gap.
- I mean yeah, I don't identify with the term atheist because it ended up shifting meaning to anti-theist on the internet in my opinion. I guess I just conflated it with "no religion" in my head, which is what the Australian statistic is.
Yes, this chart is bogus. In the last 5 years Gallup estimates of the LGBT population have gone from 5% to 7.6%, not 3%. And there's no way people who understand how to eat soup or wear pants would think 30% of Americans live in New York City.

All the numbers on this chart make no goddamn sense. Even the most right wing of fox news watching nutjobs wouldn't say there are %20+ trans people in the USA. They always claim it's like 3 people and that's why they need to ignore them/they don't matter.

I need to see the region they polled in. Preferably the exact counties because these numbers don't make sense for either of the extreme sides answers, but also the moderates wouldn't answer some of these questions these ways either.

Who TF did they get answers from??

"-How many live in New York?
-30%!"
xD

I'm not buying that atheist one.

I bet if we're going by self-report, a lot of people who "aren't religious" still shy away from the atheism label.

Ah, New York City, population 120 million.

This list is Wild. Like two thirds live in Calif & Texas loool

Also 41% are black.

90% live in CA, TX, and NYC! Sounds right to me I can't think of a single other large metro area or anything like that.
- DO YOU NEED ANY MORE PROOF?? I knew Phoenix was a myth! How can a city built in the most inhospitable place on Earth could ever have 1.5M people living (if you can call it that) in it. The name is clearly a connection to a mythical bird and everyone knows birds aren't real (anymore, follow my blog). I MEAN who would ever believe that a place that gets 110 °F easily could ever had a hockey team...
  #PhoenixIsAMyth #BirdsAreNotReal #TheNumbersDontLie
Rookie numbers

It says 3% of Americans are atheists, but about 29% of Americans are "religiously unaffiliated". I would say the poll only overestimated by 4%.

People can be agnostic too, I think religiously unaffiliated doesn't mean they are atheist but the reverse is true.
- Tbh unless a survey specified otherwise I would think it just means not religious.

No, that thing is just wrong. They "interviewed" two groups of 1000 people online who had opted into their "panel". Either they're lying about bias, or they were scammed.

The easiest giveaway is the "40% of adults are veterans" number. The average American is well aware that almost half their aquientances are not veterans.

This looks like a poll conducted entirely among silicone valley tech bros.
The U.S. Census Bureau did an online poll of 1000 people? Where did you find that information? Even the short description lists 3 sources by name. But yeah people guessing 30% of the population lives in NYC is crazy. Strange guesses
- They listed sources for the "True Proportion", but not the estimates. It doesn't actually say who they asked for the "Estimated Proportion" figures.
I urge anyone who doubts these results to test them on people they know. Yes, Americans, even those with college degrees, are incomprehensibly ignorant.

The income estimates are interesting.

We're apparently quite bad at estimating all income levels except who earns $100,000-$500,000 / year.

I think it's because $100k-$500k is a good range for the "rich" people that you normally interact with. That would cover things like lawyers, surgeons, engineers.

Given that the "estimated proportion" range is only between 20-76%, regardless of the question, this seems more indicative of a poor understanding of statistics than an over/under estimation of specific demographics, especially since a lot of contradictory demographics are way overestimated.

For example, I am significantly more likely to believe that Americans suck at percentages than that they believe nearly ever single person in the country is either Muslim, Jewish, or Catholic (these three "estimated proportions" add up to 98%).

Side note: interestingly all religious categories listed add up to 189%, but there is some overlap depending on definition (e.g. some people might argue that "Catholics are Christians" or "Jewish is an ethnicity so you can be Jewish and atheist"). Thus I picked the three that most people would agree are extremely unlikely to overlap, which coincidentally added up to nearly 100%.

EDIT: I would like to see this survey redone with the same questions, but with the addition of a few questions for things that are widely known to be extremely uncommon, bordering on non-existent, such as "percentage of people with only one ear" or "percentage of people with more than 12 siblings," and some questions for things that are widely known to be extremely common, bordering on universal, such as "percentage of people that have electricity at home" or "percentage of adults who own a phone." If even these questions result in answers grossly over/underestimating the percentage, what we have is actually an aversion to providing very small or very large estimates. (It is already known that people easily overestimate the frequency of things that are unusual especially if they can easily think of an example, such as overestimating the number of redheads because you had a classmate with red hair, or even because you can think of a celebrity with red hair).

I found it unbelievable as well so I tested these questions on college and graduate students. Answers were in range. CS majors literally believed that 40% of Americans are black and a third of the population lives in Texas.
What a person needs to answer correctly is sociocultural awareness.
- I think this still shows a poor grasp of percentages/statistics. If you were to follow up the Texas question by asking in turn, "what percentage live in California?" " How about New York?" "And Florida?" "So then what percentage live in the 46 remaining states plus US territories?" you'd watch a classroom of students slowly realize they've way surpassed 100% thanks to their overinflated initial estimates. Or conversely, if you gave them a paper with a list of states and asked them to write down what percentage of Americans lived in each state next to the state's name, it might not be accurate, but it would probably add up to 100% for significantly more respondents.
What? Of course Catholics are Christians. It's literally a denomination of Christianity, a proper subset.
- I don't disagree, but I have seen surveys before that list Catholic and Christian as separate mutually exclusive categories (as in they used "Christian" to mean "Protestant") and Protestant is not listed in the graphic in question so ¯(ツ)_/¯
Try adding up ethnic groups. If you count Jewish as a separate ethnicity, you get an estimated total of 225% and even without Jews it's still 195%.
Don't mistake aggregate with individual responses. In aggregate a survey sample might result in a sum of 98% are Muslim, Catholic or Jewish but no individual selected that sum. We could imagine a scenario where each individual chose one of those as a large majority, for example.
That said, it is true that many people really don't understand data and it's implications and tend to consistently overestimate many unlikely probabilities. Source: I teach statistics...
I wonder if the questions were phrased like “none/some/many/most/all” and not percentages?
I don’t know how else a significant sample size would end up with an average guess that 1/3 of the US population lives in NYC.

How tf car-brained USAinians in a car-dependant society assume only half the population owns a car?

Or that a fifth/a quarter of the country is Muslim/transgender/living on a million per year?
\ Or that NY is a third of the USA?

Is this data just bs?

The NY one is wild. But cars I can see. Couples who share and teenagers.
- Ok, yes, but the average answer was 50% (edit: 66%), so half of the people assumed less than 50%.
  I should have clarified that by 'is data bullshit' I meant it as the surveys work/overall effort - eg unclear questions or not making sure (actively or passively) if folk actually understood the question. It could be something stupid as a matter unclear 'owns' or 'doesn't own', so people were answering in two ways '90% own' and '10% don't own' ... of witch the average is then the bs 50% bcs it's the and metric.
  \ This is just one example of seemingly the simplest things going wrong in surveys & statisticians not having the data/balls to detect issues from datasets or rule the data in question out.
  Asking people questions is hard. They are people after all.
Or that 90% have high school degree. Either the education is terrible or the stats are bs.
- Regardless of if the stats are accurate, I can assure you the education is terrible.

My takeaway is that people are pretty good at estimating how many people have children and voted in 2020.

The voting in 2020 thing was probably not a guess or estimation, but a remembered factoid from reporting around the last election.

Wow you guys need better media and media literacy, these are wild levels of disinformation

Nearly half the population apparently having been in the military, 1 in 5 trans, 1 in 3 gay or lesbian. Do these people imagine entire battalions of non cishet people?

Do these people imagine entire battalions of non cishet people?
sacred band of thebes, US military edition
Youre right on the media. Veterans are tauted every opportunity they get, mean while theyre passing bills against transgender athletes that are literally impacting like 2 people. Where the media focuses is where people think the numbers are

This is quite a fascinating insight into many things.

One of which is how far apart the estimations are from reality.
Fear plays a huge part in most of these estimations. E.g. the world's leading organized religion is Christianity. And yet, when asked how many people in the US were Muslim, the average estimation in the US was 26%. But the reality is (according to this,) around 1%.

Another example being the percentage of Hispanics living in the US. Reality is closer to 17%, but many believed that there were over 2 times that.

Christianity may ir may not be the largest depending on how you decide who is Christian. Islammay be larger depending on your choices.

85% own a smartphone, 88% own a car, but only 83% have a driver's license, that would explain a few things. Is gas cheaper than mobile internet in the US?

Also, Americans means US citizens, Mexico and Canada are conveniently excluded as usual.

I can't believe how many people read a book in the last year. I assume that means cover to cover and not flipping through something.
- This statistic isn't about how many people read a book, but how many people said they did it.
88% own a car, but only 83% have a driver's license
I'm guessing that I still "own" a 1985 Suburban, a 1986 Cavalier, and a 1989 S10. I still have the Titles to each of these vehicles, but the vehicles themselves were scrapped decades ago.

0% of households have an income over 1milion??? I mean I get its low but I believe it exists.

There are 128.45 million households in the US. This graph explicitly round to the nearest whole percent. To have a percentage of 0, there could still be 642,141 households.
Edit: Actually I misread the stat. Of our 341.9 million people, 1.7 million might belong to a household making above a million dollars to still be approx 0%.
- I feel like if they are not going to specify and if it exists under 1% should be 1% regardless of rounding. Its just wierd to put it as 0%.
Rounding, right? 0.499999 rounds to zero.
The top 1% isn’t near 1 million

I refuse to believe this

101% of Americans are estimated to be either Democrat or Republican

Thats almost perfect compared to the religion and race estimates. Those add up to like 115% and 195% respectively.
- I'm gonna start imagining these answers came from a single guy

Link to the poll: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/41556-americans-misestimate-small-subgroups-population

True proportion: Democrats: 42% Republicans: 47%

Did I read this wrong? I’m almost certain there are more registered Democrats than Republicans.

Yeah, those numbers would need to be reviewed. The total percentage of Americans with an affiliation to any party is 47%. This smells like they used voting percentages (somehow?) for their numbers. Democrats do have more registered voters.
I wonder how many are actually independent but vote Democrat. That's what I've done since 2016 because I don't want to register myself on an "enemies list."

I'm here stuck on 65% of Americans own a house. In this economy??

I read something the other day about how there has been a slowdown, but not as much as we think. People are just taking on larger debt and paying a larger cut of their monthly income to buy homes.

The one that really got me was 12% black. I would have said 20% or so. The sexual, religion and race questions are wild! 30% Jewish?! Guess they're all in NYC. 😂

88% of Adults have flown a plane??

Flown on a plane. Dropping the word "on" really changes the meaning.
- I’d rather fly in a plane. There tends to be less wind.
- Oh, pffft. Seems like I'm not awake enough haha
In the USA according to this chart

Live in NYC could be 5%-6% for greater area. Self reported Atheism can be influenced by wanting to be in an in group. Its more than 3%.

How is driver's license possession lower than car ownership?

Licenses are cheap, cars can be shared, people tend to get a license before they get a car too. You would expect licenses to be more common than ownership. Also no matter how many cars you own, it only counts as one for this stat, one car owner can own many cars and still be just one car owner.

4% bisexual; 3% gay or lesbian

[citation needed]

there are citations in the image though?
- I just mean that the numbers can't be that low, but I understand these come from interviews.