Poll Results

Thank you to everyone who participated in my totally unscientific poll regarding number of sexual partners. Last week's TMI included a question asking participants to guesstimate how many partners the average person of the participant's gender has had. That got me to wondering and, hence, the poll.

Out of 66 respondents, 24 (36%) have had intercourse with 1-10 partners. 23 (34%) have had intercourse with 11-25 partners. 11 (16%) have had intercourse with 26-50 partners and 8 (12%) have had 51 or more partners.

So we can safely say that, of our poll participants, the vast majority (70%) have had intercourse with 25 or fewer partners. I myself fall into this majority, but I'm not telling exactly where. Y'all get to be anonymous, I get to keep a little of mine (though the exact number is in this blog somewhere, if you are really interested. And it hasn't changed since that time.)

Fewer people took part in the second half of the poll, asked about number of partners with whom one has gotten to at least 3rd base (generally considered to mean that touching below the waist has occurred).

However, of the 61 participants in the second half of the poll, the plurality (40%) have only fooled around to that degree with 15 or fewer partners, while 38% have
been to 3rd base or beyond with 16-50 partners (a wide margin, granted). 19% count 51 or more partners at that degree of intimacy.

So what does it all mean? Not a damn thing. If we took the time to break it down by gender, sexual orientation, age, race, etc. and we had a significantly larger sampling, we might have something. But we don't. So all we know is that while we are a horny bunch of people, we're maybe not so promiscuous as some think and not so inexperienced as others think.

Why does it mean nothing? Look at just the age factor. Take two women, each with 15 sexual partners total and each of whom first had sex at age 15. One is 45 years old and one is 18 years old. Big difference, at least to me. I'm not going to judge either one, but lots of people will and their judgement of the 18 year old is going to be much harsher than that of the 45 year old. That's just one example of how these numbers don't really tell us anything of value.

Stay tuned for my next poll. Thinking of a couple different things, not sure which I'll go with. All I can promise is that it will be totally unscientific and we'll probably not learn anything of value. We'll see!