Editing Openai/69566be9-e9c0-8009-992a-722fd2764e7a (section)

=== Assistant: Short answer: No, do not assume 4% error for Ukraine-war questions. ===
Short answer: No, do not assume ~4% error for Ukraine-war questions. The error is often larger and more asymmetric.

Why Ukraine questions are special (and worse):
# High moral loading / social desirability Ukraine questions trigger normatively “correct” answers (support Ukraine, condemn Russia). That inflates consensus and hides dissent. Weighting does not fix this.
# Elite cueing and media saturation Opinions track elite framing more than stable preferences. That produces fragile opinions that shift with wording and news cycles.
# Low personal cost, high abstraction Many respondents answer symbolically (“what position should my country have?”) rather than instrumentally (“what would I accept if it costs me?”). Symbolic opinions are noisier.
# Cross-national comparability problems In multi-country polls, “support Ukraine,” “peace,” or “negotiation” mean different things in different political cultures. The topline hides this.
# Hidden minority effects Pro-Russia, anti-NATO, or “stop aid” positions are often underreported, not randomly distributed. That biases results directionally, not just with random error.

Bottom line:
For Ukraine-war questions, treat ±5–8 percentage points as a more realistic uncertainty band, and be alert to systematic bias, not just sampling error. These questions do stand out—and not in a good way methodologically.