I was recalling the Gallup poll when I made my post.
You are way off. My number is closer to the actual than yours.
Shocking Gallup Poll: Average American Thinks 25 Percent of Country Is Gay
Do you really think we are having a sane societal debate on anything homosexuality-related when the typical Americans thinks that 25 percent yes, 25 percent of the country is gay?[snip]
Only 4 percent of all those surveyed in 2011 and about 8 percent of those surveyed in 2002 correctly guessed that fewer than 5 percent of Americans identify as gay or lesbian... The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, a gay and lesbian think tank, released a study in April 2011 estimating based on its research that just 1.7 percent of Americans between 18 and 44 identify as gay or lesbian, while another 1.8 percent predominantly women identify as bisexual... A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of women between 22 and 44 that questioned more than 13,500 respondents between 2006 and 2008 found very similar numbers: Only 1 percent of the women identified themselves as gay, while 4 percent identified as bisexual."
-PJ
They won't answer most other sex related questions either.
The pollsters almost invariably count such answers as being non-answers and they drop the respondents from the statistical base. That has the effect of doubling the homosexual answer.
The Gallup poll erred in making their practice known ~ and they got the sort of response you'd expect if a small group ALWAYS answered the phone (or did a pollster call back) and the larger group only responded at 9% of the time.
There's also a bias where wealthier Americans have more phone numbers and are more likely to be selected by a pollster ~ if a random number dialer is in use. That's the same sort of problem that had pollsters telling us Dewey had beaten Truman.
People who are issued cellphone service by their employers are also easily overrepresented in any telephone poll.
Again, pollsters substitute for these deficiencies in modern random sample polling with older methods ~ see AUGERIES ~ and simple rationalization.
I watched primary numbers. Where no one was much interested, they didn't show up to vote for the guy in the Fall either. Sure, there's not a lot of precision in that sort of analysis, but it gives you a trendline.
BTW, that’s a single poll. Gallup asked every respondent in 2012 if he or she was gay ~ they reported an aggregate response.