25%: Know a homeless person
With estimates of more than 3 million homeless Americans, including more than 1 million homeless children, we wondered if you know anyone who is homeless. In a Poll Position national scientific telephone survey, a quarter of Americans, 25%, said they do know a homeless person, 64% did not, and 11% had no opinion.
African-Americans and young people had the highest number of those who said they know a homeless person. Among African-Americans, 35% said they know someone who is homeless, 42% did not, 23% had no opinion. In the 18-29 year old age group, 32% said they knew a homeless person, 56% did not, and 12% did not have an opinion.
Among men and women, 25% said they knew someone who is homeless. More men said they did not know anyone who is homeless with 67% saying they don’t. Women countered with 61% saying they do not know anyone who is homeless.
Poll Position’s scientific telephone survey of 1,138 registered voters nationwide was conducted November 29, 2011 and has a margin of error of ±3%. Poll results are weighted to be a representative sampling of all American adults.
What do you think? Vote in our online companion poll and comment below.
The online companion poll in which you can vote provides unscientific results, meaning it’s a tally of participating Poll Position users, not a nationally representative sampling.
Poll Position is committed to transparency and upholding the highest professional standards in its polling, explaining why we provide you with the crosstabs of our scientific polls. Crosstabs provide a breakdown of survey participants by age, race, gender, and political affiliation. Here are the crosstabs for this poll: Poll Position Crosstabs-Homeless
You can learn more about our polling methodology here.
I kind of wish I did know someone who was homeless once in their life. It would a neat experience to talk to them about what life was like, and how they survived.