Do polyamorous people have more sex?
Not necessarily. The available survey data finds polyamorous people report sexual frequency in similar ranges to monogamous peers; what varies more reliably is the distribution across partners and the explicitness of sexual communication.
The cultural assumption is that polyamorous practice means more sex by definition. The survey data tells a more interesting story: total sexual frequency reported by polyamorous people doesn't reliably outpace that of monogamous peers. What varies is the distribution.
Conley and Moors' research on consensual non-monogamy and on sexual satisfaction has found, across multiple studies, that polyamorous practitioners and monogamous people report comparable sexual frequency at the individual level, with polyamorous people sometimes reporting higher sexual satisfaction with each partner because of a higher base rate of explicit sexual communication. The structural mechanic seems to matter less than the communication infrastructure that the structural complexity forces.
Polyamorous practitioners themselves often describe being surprised by the same finding once they're inside the practice. The fantasy of polyamory frequently centres on volume; the lived reality is calendar-management, deep partnership, periodic NRE with new connections, and long stretches of being just as routinely sexually active or inactive as one was before. Sex tends to deepen in quality rather than multiply in count.
What does change: the explicitness of sexual communication. Polyamorous practice tends to require partners to articulate their desires, agreements, and boundaries with more specificity than monogamous norms typically demand. That clarity tends to make the sex that does happen more satisfying — but it's not the same as more.