Aha! I understand now.
But the standard seems arbitrary. American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico are all United States territory, aren’t they? Why shouldn’t we be required to circle them too? And if only the 50 States of the Union count, then you’d have to leave out the District of Columbia, which I assume is included in most people’s circle.
Danimal (who’s not quite sure where American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands are).
I think your point is valid, but I will say that well-designed polls can correct for this stuff, for instance by asking really bizarre questions. If they get equally bizarre answers to the control questions, they know the participant is either psychotic or playing with them.
–Cliffy
While I am at least as dubious of some polls and their methods as the next guy, from the wording of the original article above and the NSF report in the link, it sounds like it was a multiple choice. they tend to be less manipulable to trick questions such as the map thing and yields more meaningful statistics.
As for the Jaywalking, of course we know most people get these questions right. What’s troubling is that ANY adult citizen can not know, for example of one I saw, that the US and Japan once fought a war. But I guess that would involve watching black & white movies, which are well known to our youth to suck.(again, I kid not!)