Polling Wiretaps

This is a particularly tricky issue. How will it play out in the American public? It's hard to say right now. The New York Times today released some initial polling data on the subject. The results were particularly intersting. The question was asked two ways. For instance, when the question was posed like this:

After 9/11, President Bush authorized government wiretaps on some phone calls in the U.S. without getting court warrants, saying this was necessary in order to reduce the threat of terrorism. Do you approve or disapprove of the President doing this?

the results were 53% approval and 46% disapproval.

However, when the question was then posed like this:

After 9/11, George W. Bush authorized government wiretaps on some phone calls in the U.S. without getting court warrants. Do you approve or disapprove of George W. Bush doing this?

the results were 46 % approval and 50 % disapproval.

This was something mentioned by the professor in my Contemporary American Foreign Policy class, Dr. James Rinehart. For instance, if you asked people if they supported the president fully using his powers as commander-in-chief of the armed forces to conduct domestic electronic surveillance in order to combat terrorism, a majority of people would say they supported such action. However, if you asked people if they approved of the president conducted warrantless wiretaps of American citizens to figt terroism, the support would decrease dramatically.

Dr. Steven L. Taylor, a professor here at Troy University in the Political Science Department posted on his personal blog, PoliBlog, about the same subject:

Two of the basic tenets of polling are 1) that polls are most useful when knowledge on the topic that is the subject of the poll is high, and 2) that to understand public opinion, the issue has to reduced to a series of simple questions that are as unambiguous as possible–the more complex the questions, the worse the information one is gathering.

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Well, in regards to #1: since we don’t really know what the program is, it is rather hard to say that knowledge of the program is high in the population. Further, even what we do know about it is complex and is clearly affected by partisan orientation. Democrats are far more likely to believe that the President is acting improperly, and Republicans more likely to think the
opposite.

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In regards to #2: it is rather difficult to ask unambiguous questions on this topic. Moreover, it is clear from watching this process for the last several weeks, the way the question is worded influences the response.