Omnibus/YouGov Poll on Evolution

A poll held July 8-9, 2013 on Evolution among 1,000 people shows SOME encouraging news but not a hell of a lot.

The options were Naturalistic Evolution, humans evolved with no direction from God, Theistic Evolution, humans evolved but evolution was directed by God, Creationism, humans were created by God in their present form in the last 10,000 years and Not Sure.

Overall 21% chose Naturalistic Evolution and 25% Theistic Evolution for a total of 46%. Only 37% chose Creationism and 17% said they weren't sure.

Among males, 26% chose Naturalistic Evolution and 30% Theistic Evolution for a total of 56%. 31% chose Creationism and 13% said they weren't sure.

Among females, only 17% chose Naturalistic Evolution and 20% Theistic Evolution for a total of 37%. A plurality of 43% of females chose Creationism and 21% said they weren't sure.

That's a huge difference between males and females. One has to wonder why that is? Evolution almost certainly occurred, yet some 64% of females don't seem to be aware of that.

Acceptance of Evolution was highest among those aged 18-29 (60%) and lowest among those 65 or older (43%).

53% of Democrats accept some form of Evolution along with 47% of Independents but only 35% of Republicans. Only 5% of Republicans chose Naturalistic Evolution while 28% of Democrats and 26% of Independents did.

In terms of education, 60% of respondents with a college degree, and 70% with a post graduate degree, accepted some form of Evolution.

In the West, 63% accepted some form of Evolution and in the Northeast it was 54%. In both the Midwest and the South it was only 37%.

The racial breakdown was something of a surprise. While 48% of whites accepted some form of Evolution only 24% of blacks did. Only 6% of blacks accepted Naturalistic Evolution compared to 25% of whites.

Again education appears to be the critical factor followed closely by the region of the country where you happen to live. I was a bit surprised by the disparities by sex and race but this isn't a very large sample size so by sex has a margin of error in the 4% range and the poll among blacks a margin of error in the 10% range.

Still, the results are interesting. It would be even more interesting to see a correlation between sex, race, education and region of the country but that information wasn't available in the report I read.