I appreciate Ilya’s clarification about the Pew Poll; as he notes, the question about reactions to words was preceded by questions about politics. Ilya may be right that this implicitly clued in poll respondents that they were really being asked not for the reactions to the words (as the poll asked) but for their reactions to the ideas signified by the words in the specific environment of today’s politics. Or at the very least, this would have likely clued in respondents who are particularly well informed about terms used in todays’ political debates.