The final season of Game of Thrones was the talk of the summer, and if you looked online, odds are that saw a lot of unfavorable opinions. From the low lighting of the Battle of Winterfell to the crowning of Bran the Broken, fans had a lot to say about the final six episodes.
The chatter was so loud that you could easily get the idea that the majority of viewers didn’t enjoy the final season. But is that really the case, or is this an example of online rhetoric misrepresenting reality?
Enter YouGov, a market research and data analytics firm. With the Emmys around the corner, they conducted a poll to determine what people thought of the various nominees, including Game of Thrones. Unlike, say, a Twitter poll, this one has a margin of error and a methodology and a dispassionate perspective and everything. That doesn’t automatically make it more accurate, but it does mean there was a lot more math involved than usual.
You can read the full results of the poll here. Below, let’s summarize the Game of Thrones-related findings:
- 52% of people were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the final season.
- 41% were unhappy with season 8, while 7% were neutral.
- YouGov asked how many people had seen every episode of the shows up for the Outstanding Drama Series Emmy. 18% of those polled had seen every episode of Game of Thrones, the highest number for any show.
- Speaking of the night’s top award, YouGov asked which show should win it. 18% of people polled think it should go to Game of Thrones, which is the highest proportion for any answer other than “I Don’t Know.”
A total of 2,475 adults participated in the poll, which ran from Aug 21-23. You might be thinking 2,475 people isn’t a lot of people when you consider the number of viewers reaches up in the millions, but random sampling is how most professional polling works. The margin of error was about 3%.
So according to this poll, most people enjoyed the final season of Game of Thrones, although 41% of people not enjoying it is hardly ideal. Still, it doesn’t track with the idea that most people hated it. I wonder if some fans weren’t fearful of admitting that they liked it given all the hostility in the aftermath of the series finale, or maybe they just weren’t the kind of fans who talk about their opinions a lot online. Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t genuinely disappointed fans out there — obviously there are — I just suspect that there were a lot of people who didn’t choose to share what they really thought.
In any case, I think there’s a good chance that the show could indeed snag an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series. I’ve noticed that every time a show has ended and is up for its last round of Emmys ever, the voters love to make sure they win. Think of Jon Hamm finally winning an Emmy for Mad Men in 2015 when he had never won before.
Of course, Mad Men lost the Outstanding Drama Series award to Game of Thrones that year, but I’m not sure that weakens my point.
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