On October 15, Focus on the Family’s Daily Citizen headlined that young Americans “Increasingly Support Sharia Law”. Its source is one Rasmussen Reports/Our Republic survey of September 20 that asked for an opinion and gives no earlier figure. The headline holds three claims, and the poll carries one. “Increasingly” says opinion moved over time; the survey was taken on a single day, September 20, and neither the pollster nor the article gives an earlier reading. “Support” says young people back a law; the question asked for a positive or negative opinion of sharia. The pollster’s own partner called the result “a striking generational divide”: a gap between ages on one day, which the headline turns into a march. The headline drops even its own number. A word of change arrives with nothing to measure it against, and the mind supplies the smaller earlier figure it was never shown: the missing base rate. It is the naked number in its barest form, a rise with no figure at all. The tell: a word like increasingly or warming resting on one measurement. The base left out: 21% of all likely voters were positive, 57% negative, and the crosstabs give no head count for the 18-to-24 group. The article climbs the villain stages fast. A favorable feeling becomes support, support becomes “full Muslim rule”, and a legal tradition becomes a people taking power: Essentialization into Threat Assessment. The picture finishes it: a woman caned in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, on October 15, above a headline about young Americans. The sample size first appears in the ninth paragraph, after the “devolution” line. The page runs 18 days before the midterms, beside a promoted book called “Sharia Versus the U.S. Constitution”.
