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Notes -
American Elites
https://www.rmgresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Elite-One-Percent.pdf
I found this recent Rasmussen presentation, it focuses on subsections of the elite. It was funded by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a libertarian thinktank. One might consider them elite heretics or counter-elites (and sure enough they have a slide at the end saying ‘oh there are some elites who are good and trustworthy'). Us non-Gold Circle normies only get the slides, so it's a little unclear what they mean.
Anyway, they define elite as postgrad urbanite with 150K per year income. They further split elites into those who went to 12 top colleges and the ‘politically obsessed’ (definition unclear but I imagine it means they spend a certain number of hours reading/watching/discussing political media). For instance, I imagine we would be considered ‘politically obsessed’.
As you might expect, the elite are the ones who approve of Biden and Congress. They trust the government to do the right thing. I imagine that even if they don’t think the government’s doing a great job they’re friends with high ranking officials and feel a certain amity for them. In my experience, their brother might be an ambassador, they might have an AI regulator over for lunch. Even if they’ve been astonished by the stupid questions journalists ask them, they’ve still got fairly positive impressions of the prestige press and read at least two or three newspapers.
Elites are also much more likely to say ‘there’s too much individual freedom in the US’ than voters, especially the politically obsessed elites. Likewise, they favour strict restrictions on private usage of gas, vehicles, meat and electricity. It’s bizarre that 55% oppose non-essential air travel since this class is the most likely to go on overseas holidays, I don’t understand how this works. Anyway, they want restrictions on everything except border security, which they couldn’t care less about. Plebs hold the opposite beliefs.
I was most surprised by how 29% of the elite thinks that China is an ally, compared to 9% of ordinary voters. I would’ve thought the elites were the hawks! Maybe some of them have commercial interests in China or they want to work with China on climate change or they’re ethnically Chinese, anyway this is really odd to me. The hawk faction may be in control but the doves haven’t been totally eviscerated. Does anyone have any explanations or observations on this matter?
35% of the elite would rather cheat than lose a close election, rising to 69% of the ‘politically obsessed’. Only 7% of pleb voters would cheat. That seems like an underestimate to me – who goes and says ‘I would rather cheat than lose an election’ on a poll? Wouldn’t people be embarrassed (or tactical) and lie – they’re cheats after all! Again, I don’t know the exact definition of cheat but I imagine many more would do something subversive like hold back successful COVID vaccine results until after the election or engage in various procedural manipulations. Edit for an example of what I mean for 'non-cheating' manipulation: https://twitter.com/stevenmackeyman/status/1764876192648499220
I think it’s clear that these are the people with actual power and influence, the ones who set the agenda, the key actors in tech, media, government and law. They create outcomes, or lack thereof. Just about every judge would be elite by this definition, along with nearly all AI workers (OK maybe not the work-from-home guys in the Colorado mountains). All lobbyists, the heads of most NGOs, the most important lawyers – everyone except the right-wing politicians who seem unable to achieve any of their goals.
It’s not like it’s hard to close the US border. The US is a global power after all. The US seems to think it can defend Ukraine’s borders against the Russian army from the other side of the world and secure Taiwan’s borders against the PLA, it must be at least 1000x easier to defend the US border against stateless, unarmed mobs. They just don’t care, indeed their energy seems to swing the other way – see the recent US-Texas standoff over barbed wire and the border. The survey said not one respondent cared about the border as a priority, presumably some think immigration is quite a good thing and want more, illegal or otherwise.
On other fronts, we observe these creeping changes – everyone seems to need a college degree if they want to do anything. That’s not the will of the majority but it is what the elite want. You can see these articles that go ‘relax nobody’s coming to take your gas stove’, how they struck down the federal bill. But the state legislation in New York and other cities is proceeding, it’s clear that this is the path that the US is on. Likewise, the disputes over the 2020 election. I'm suspicious but can't prove that the election was rigged, or that Epstein didn't kill himself. Nevertheless, US democracy doesn't seem in very good shape if its elites are so willing to win by fraud.
I think that the PDF that you link is, unfortunately, nearly useless for drawing any conclusions. It just summarizes some alleged findings. We need to know the methodology of the poll and the exact questions asked. I haven't been able to find that information so far. The closest I have found after a very brief online search is this: https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Them-vs-Us_CTUP-Rasmussen-Study-FINAL.pdf.
Some points of interest (quotes are from the PDF I link to in my first paragraph):
What kind of online surveys? How did they find the participants? How did they secure the surveys from the kind of issues that often make online surveys nearly useless?
This is sample survey question, by the way. Note that it does not say "To fight climate change, do you favor or oppose the strict rationing of gas, meat, and electricity". The subtle grammatical difference may affect responses because the elite are more likely to distinguish between "would" and "do" than the average American, for whom the two might basically mean the same thing in this context.
Another sample question. The two choices are "$100 or Less" and "$500 or More". Obviously for the elite to pick "$500 or More" does not mean the same thing as it would for the average American to pick "$500 or More". Why they didn't provide choices as a fraction of income or wealth, I have no idea.
These are just three random things that jumped out at me after glancing over the PDF for a minute or so. If we had access to all of the actual survey questions and the responses, we might be able to find a hundred more possible issues.
Wow, that's concerning. Online surveys are garbage, didn't realize it was one of those.
Online polls open to self-selecting members of the public are garbage. But that's different from conducting a survey online by selecting people some other way and then giving them a link instead of a sheet of paper to fill out, which is how many surveys are conducted nowadays.
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