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You have a picture of it. What most people believe about immigration, climate, crime, how the country is doing.
That picture has been checked against the actual answers.
From the people around you, and from whatever the media shows you.
Both are samples, and neither is a random one.
People cluster with people like themselves — same area, same work, same schooling.
So the room you are in is not a small copy of the country.
Attention follows the unusual and the extreme, because that is what gets watched.
The ordinary majority position is not news, so it is rarely on screen.
When people estimate what the country thinks, they usually:
Each group overestimates how extreme the other is, and often overestimates how much the other dislikes them.
The error is symmetrical, which is part of what keeps it going.
If you believe the other side is more extreme than it is, compromise looks pointless and hostility looks justified.
A wrong picture of others is not neutral.
Which gives you a fair picture of what a country thinks?
Tap an item, then a bucket
It goes looking for people who were not going to speak up. The quiet middle only appears when somebody deliberately asks it.
On most contested questions the biggest group holds a mixed, moderate position and says nothing about it in public.
They are invisible by temperament, not by rarity.
When you notice yourself sure of what everyone thinks, ask where the picture came from.
If it came from people you know or from a feed, it is a sample chosen to be interesting.
Your sense of public opinion is built from two skewed samples. Both exaggerate division. And the largest group on most questions is the one you never hear from.