Twitchy called this quite a while ago: while we see women in “Handmaid’s Tale” cosplay protesting everywhere they believe “women’s reproductive rights” are under assault, production on the show based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, filed under Feminist Hysteria in the library, began well before the 2016 election. So while we’d still be watching it (or more likely not watching it) with Hillary Clinton in the White House, the show has been endlessly linked with the Trump administration.

We’re not sure why, but Morning Consult and The Hollywood Reporter recently surveyed 2,201 adult viewers of the show and asked them if the show’s depiction of a patriarchal theocracy was likely to become reality or simply played on irrational fears.

The results were “chilling,” according to Mashable.

Chilling survey links party affiliation and belief in 'Handmaid's Tale' realityhttps://t.co/BE8gE6iQbW — Mashable (@mashable) June 5, 2019

Chilling:

The survey, which polled 2,201 adult viewers from May 31 – June 2, asked participants to choose between two statements, selecting the one they agreed with more: “The dystopia shown in The Handmaid’s Tale is grounded in truth and could become reality someday” or “The dystopia shown in The Handmaid’s Tale capitalizes on people’s irrational fears and won’t become a reality.”

Heck, we would have screwed with them and objected to “The Handmaid’s Tale” being labeled a “dystopia” in the first place.

While 67 percent of people polled said they didn’t know or had no opinion, the 33 percent who did answer were almost evenly split — with 17 percent saying “Handmaid’s” could become reality, and 16 percent saying it could not. (For reference, the one percent difference accounts for 30 votes.) Contextualized by additional demographic data, those two camps are strikingly partisan. Democrats were substantially more likely to agree with the first statement, with 29 percent of Democratic men and 26 percent of Democratic women selecting it, while just 8 percent of Republican men and 9 percent of Republican women agreed that Gilead could become reality.

So in this chilling survey, two-thirds of respondents said they didn’t know or had no opinion … probably because it’s a fictional TV show based on a fictional novel (written by a Canadian during the Reagan administration).

Look, they even made a little video:

A survey shows connection between political affiliation and belief in ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ plausibility pic.twitter.com/HRYGKoBeqU — Mashable (@mashable) June 7, 2019

Fighting for “women’s access to health care,” which absolutely no one in politics has tried to limit. It’s abortion, plain and simple.

Did anyone really need a survey to find this out? — JonBownePolitix (@JonBownePolitix) June 7, 2019

Marks for ingenuity, but when you reduce the sample size down to people who actually answered the question (33% of 2201), these results are basically worthless. There's perhaps a seed of something here, but without stronger data this is just inflammatory. https://t.co/RtjVQL7i3S — Cordell (@cordellcolter) June 6, 2019

A survey shows and a study finds…. Mashables 2 favorite intro titles. #fakejournalism — allday (@strictlymacin) June 7, 2019

Let's make accusations on political parties based on a work of fiction based on another work of fiction, because that's totally accurate.? — Inconvienient Truth (@BeastofOrem) June 5, 2019

White straight people don’t think it could happen because it hasn’t ever happened to them. — Mikey (@mikey_bits) June 5, 2019

White straight people aren’t necessarily wrong, despite current thinking.

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