Frequently Asked Questions

Fat Finger is a free mobile app and website that publishes a topical three-question mini-poll every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

We don’t run ads, and we never sell or share your data.

A searchable archive of over 5,000 poll questions dating back to 2012.

To expand participation in and awareness of public opinion across all segments of society.
We believe democracy benefits from a public that can express their views and know the views of others.

Users are able to contribute their views to a trusted provider of public opinion, and can learn what the country thinks, in real-time.

You'll earn badges and rewards for answering polls and trying other Fat Finger features.

We have a representative panel: We measure and present public opinion in an unbiased manner, which encourages all sides to participate. Our questions are written to discover opinion, not to support an agenda. For over a decade the political affiliation of our panel has been withing a few percentage points of Gallup’s party affiliation statistics

In any given poll the demographics of the respondents may be skewed, so we weight each poll’s responses based on who replies to the poll, to account for any over or under representation. For instance, if 30-44 year old, male, Republicans make up 12% of the US adult population, and in a given poll that demographic comprised only 10% of our respondents, then each of their responses would get a weight of 12/10 = 120%. Conversely if in a given poll that demographic was 14% of our respondents, then each of their responses would get a weight of 12/14 = 86%

We use Iterative Proportional Fitting. IPF works by adjusting the weight of each response based on the demographic characteristics of the respondent. Specifically, the IPF algorithm begins by establishing a set of target demographics, such as age, gender, and political affiliation, that we want to accurately represent in survey results. The algorithm then iteratively adjusts the weights of each response until the overall distribution of demographics matches the target distribution. This process continues until the weights converge to a stable solution. The result is a representative weighted sample that accurately reflects the target population.

Some demographic groups that we currently list comprise a relatively small portion of the country, such that breaking results by that group may mislead rather than illuminate. For instance, it is estimated that people who identify as non-binary make up about 2-10% of young adults in the US but only 1% of the country as a whole. As such, in a poll with 500 respondents we could expect only 5 are non-binary. The results of a 5-person poll are not statistically reliable to represent that group, and as such we don’t break by groups that small. A group must be at least 10% of the US voting age population for us to break by it.

Not knowing data outside one’s own “crowd” leads to distrust of crucial institutions. Information silos cause people to often be surprised by what they perceive to be negative outcomes, and more prone to believe in false theories to explain how things went “wrong.”

For example;
88% of people that voted for Joe Biden in 2016 believed he was going to win.
87% of Donald Trump voters believed he was going to win.

Whoever lost, most of their voters were going to be unpleasantly surprised, and perhaps unbelieving of the result. The more people know what others think, the better informed they are, and the better off we are as individuals and as a society.

We contextualize the results: Our poll results link to past polls on the same topic, show users how views may have changed (or not) over time, and generally create a more complete picture of public opinion. Results are breakable by political affiliation, age and gender, so users can better understand who thinks what.

We personalize the product: Panelists can see how their responses place them along different demographic groups, and how responses they’ve submitted predict their views on other issues. Users may not only better understand others, they may better understand themselves.

We demystify polling: We make public the process behind the generation of each question and post insights to help explain select results.

We keep it brief: Each poll is only three questions along a common theme. This doesn’t mean we don’t put a lot of effort into or polls, we do. With apologies to Twain (or Franklin, or Thoreau…) we never have to say, “if we had more time we would have written a shorter poll.” We take the time so respondents, visitors, and followers don’t have to.