I know this is a joke thread, but I think this is a great example of a poorly designed survey question that charitable people would say ‘generates discussion’. I would say it enables confirmation bias and just creates animosity amongst people looking for reasons to dislike an imaginary other.

My instinct when I first saw reporting of this was, yeah I probably could. But that’s because I read the question as me being able to play until I won a point. If I even won one, even by a double fault, I win. When I said as much on social media people jumped on me. But here’s the thing, I think theres like a 99.8% chance that the world’s best Female tennis player wins any given point against me. I’m just expecting one shanked return from 500 efforts.

Then uproar. Because it’s only because she’s a woman. Except… Well there isn’t an equivalent question for Novak Djokovic! So people are jumping to conclude reasoning, and YouGov is formenting that by reporting on a shoddy question with no control to give us a benchmark. For the record I think on average I’d have to wait longer to win a point against the worlds best male tennis player, because they serve so much faster, but I don’t think I’d be waiting forever.

So people read the question and assume both that the question refers to a one point shoot out, and they already think the greater portion of men are misogynists. Well then that’s the explanation! It cannot be an ambiguous question interpreted differently!

And I’m not denying that for some people the worst explanation is unfortunately the correct one. But I do have an issue with people dismissing or ignoring fairly rational objections to the survey or interpretations of it because of their pre-existing biases.

Not true either, someone has linked the survey question above 12% of men said yes, 3% of women

I’ve just gone and copied the wording from the link…

Do you think if you were playing your very best tennis, you could win a point off Serena Williams?