Young Writers Society

Heya Vil,

I remember taking your survey, so I am actually really interested to see these results and I'm glad you wrote this up!

I agree with some of the other reviews, re: some of the language you used was a bit emotive rather than objective. One instance that stood out to me was:

For a grand total of 16.2%, the right wing minority would be defeated if this survey represented all of America rather than just YWS members, including non-Americans.

Based upon my calculations, this means one member of the leftist coalition supports Trump's presidency.

In the next survey, this question will be more specific as it is currently unlikely (less than 15% chance) that Trump will win re-election according to the 538 2020 Forecast.

Not a review, more of a comment.

1) I think you posted this in the debate forum? That’s where I found it. I don’t know how many active users go there. You might have posted it on your wall as well, but again, that would limit the sample to people who follow you. I’m not sure what the best strategy to get an actual unbiased sample of users is.

2) Yeah I remember being very confused that the phone/apps wasn’t an option on the news section, given that’s where 99 percent of my information comes from. I guess if you wanted to go in detail on this, you could ask about specific news outlets regardless of how you consume it.

3) As a former young person, I’d say the assumption that young people would be more liberal was highly flawed. This might be true in a broader age range (like compared to my boomer dad who sends me those dumb email forwards about lazy and evil Democrats ) but we’re talking very young people here, people who may not have done the self examination of “what my parents taught me” versus “what I actually believe about the world”. So if their parents are more conservative, it is highly likely they will be as well. I know when I was younger I believed gay people were icky because when I asked my mom what gay meant and she responded in that nasty tone that implied it was icky and that the Iraq war was good because otherwise you hated America. It was only after learning more about gay people and seeing how well the Iraq war turned out (not) that I reexamined those assumptions. I’d say I’m more liberal now than I was at 14-15. That’s not to say age/experience will automatically make someone more liberal, but rather that I wouldn’t automatically expect liberal because of our age range. Also, the first gen Z congressman is going to be Madison Cawthorn who is endorsed by Trump so definitely a bad assumption that young=liberal.

Actually, after all that rambling I just realized that you never explained your rationale behind your hypothesis. I’m just guessing that it was based on age. While I don’t expect this to be a fully fleshed our academic analysis, I would at least explain why you thought what you did.

4) if we learned anything from the 2016 election, it’s that you cannot trust the polls. So I wouldn’t just assume Biden will win.

Okay this got really long and turned into a review of sorts. Overall, this was interesting but I agree with previous points about bias and using sources.

This is really interesting! I've always thought that YWS more left-leaning, so I was just as surprised as you were when I saw the results for the poll. Then again, only 31 members responded - so maybe there's more left-leaning people out there? Either way, it's really interesting!

Hey Vil, Morri here to review your piece.

The first thing I noticed about this piece is that it's extremely biased. Reading through RavenLord's review, I think that they could have emphasized even more how biased it was. Unless you're planning on only ever writing opinion pieces, it is an excellent idea to present survey results without using language that suggests you are in favor of some answers over others. Your tone was also something that put me off. You jump to conclusions, which gives you a pretentious air. There are several examples, but this one really struck me as a problem area:

Surprisingly, this question showed that many YWS users are/were superstitious. 19.2% refused to name a winner because they were afraid of jinxing it.

"Many of the important issues fell under the same umbrella. Healthcare, abortion, and the pandemic should all be the same option," one survey taker said. While others may or may not agree with this statement, there were multiple reasons that these were not combined-- the most important one being that the majority of Americans do not see each issue the same way or prioritize them differently.

while 16.2 would have chosen another candidate. These candidates wee Sen. Bernie Sanders, someone's dog, Libertarian Jo Jorgensen, Jesus, and New Zealand evangelist Ray Comfort.

Hi, Vil! Raven here with a quick review.
So I don't usually review political pieces, but since I took part in this survey I figured I should give it a read.
I love that you were curious about the opinions of people here on YWS--it's important to know your audience. That being said, your summary of the survey read as extremely biased. It's fine to have bias--that's how we get political parties. However, in an educational survey, reviewing it with such blatant and insensitive opinion is something of a no-no. Using words like "unsurprisingly" and "we've all hated America at one point or another" can alienate and offend specific members of the audience. I'm not saying I agree with certain political opinions, but adding your own feelings to a survey (and in an indelicate way such as that) can lead to clashes that future politicians should be trying to prevent. Everyone who took this survey and answered the questions are human beings with their own reasons for supporting what they support. A politician's job is not to hold these feelings against their opponents; their job is to understand why the opponents feel this way and make an effort to remedy that through education, economic action, or otherwise.
Your results were interesting and I appreciated your use of sources and quotations, but I can't condone such heavily implied bias in an academic piece. YWS is a safe space for a lot of our young writers, and serious political pieces like this with bias included can "rock the boat", to quote A Series of Unfortunate Events. My advice to you going forward with another project such as this would be to distance yourself from the issue far more.
Thank you for reading and happy writing!

Regards,
RavenLord