Another opinion on the initial poll results: This does not show that it is bimodal.
In terms of natural measures on probability such as log-odds, the two “modes” are actually unbounded ranges while the middle two are bounded. If the uncertainty is large, you should expect the infinite ranges at each end to have more weight simply because most of the unimodal distribution is outside the bounded ranges.
In terms of the natural log-odds measure, the results are quite consistent with a normal distribution on ln(p/(1-p)) with mean around −2.5 (corresponding to about P(doom) = 8%) and standard deviation around 5, which is quite broad in a log-odds scale, but still only a few bits of evidence worth. There is some evidence of skew toward the 0-1% range, but it’s pretty weak. There is no evidence for bimodality.
Another opinion on the initial poll results: This does not show that it is bimodal.
In terms of natural measures on probability such as log-odds, the two “modes” are actually unbounded ranges while the middle two are bounded. If the uncertainty is large, you should expect the infinite ranges at each end to have more weight simply because most of the unimodal distribution is outside the bounded ranges.
In terms of the natural log-odds measure, the results are quite consistent with a normal distribution on ln(p/(1-p)) with mean around −2.5 (corresponding to about P(doom) = 8%) and standard deviation around 5, which is quite broad in a log-odds scale, but still only a few bits of evidence worth. There is some evidence of skew toward the 0-1% range, but it’s pretty weak. There is no evidence for bimodality.