New Poll Finds Mixed Support for Wiretaps (NYT tries hard to skew)

Americans are willing to tolerate eavesdropping without warrants to fight terrorism, but are concerned that the aggressive antiterrorism programs championed by the Bush administration are encroaching on civil liberties, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

In a sign that public opinion about the trade-offs between national security and individual rights is nuanced and remains highly unresolved, responses to questions about the administration's eavesdropping program varied significantly depending on how the questions were worded, underlining the importance of the effort by the White House this week to define the issue on its terms.

In one striking finding, respondents overwhelmingly supported e-mail and telephone monitoring directed at "Americans that the government is suspicious of;" they overwhelmingly opposed the same kind of surveillance if it was aimed at "ordinary Americans."

From Powerline:

"Push-polling, MSM style

A New York Times/CBS poll purports to find that support for the president's warrantless surveillance program is "mixed." But the poll is bogus. In addition to the usual MSM trick of over-sampling Democrats, including non-voters, etc., the pollsters asked misleading questions that do not reflect the actual nature of the NSA intercept program.

The Times finds that public approval of warrantless intercepts varies depending on how the question is framed. The Times already understood this phenomenon all too well. That, presumably is why it conducted a poll in which none of the questions asks respondents directly what they think about using warrantless surveillance in the case of suspected terrorists making calls from overseas to the U.S. Still, the more information the pollsters included that reflects the purpose and nature of the actual administration intercept program, the more willing respondents were to support the program. For example, almost 70 percent of Americans answer "willing" to this question:

In order to reduce the threat of terrorism, would you be willing or not willing to allow government agencies to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of Americans that the government is suspicious of?

Ankle Biting Pundits has the details."

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/012953.php

Poll analysis from anklebitingpundits.com:

"Debunking and Explaining Yet Another Misleading MSM Poll
Posted by bulldogpundit on Friday, 27 January 2006 (09:37:26) EST
Contributed by bulldogpundit

Once again, The New York Times and CBS News have released a poll suggesting electoral doom for the GOP and the President, as well as saying the public's views are "mixed" when it comes to the NSA Surveillance program depending on how the questions are asked.

That's true in any poll, but what the NYT doesn't tell you is that the questions they asked were misleading and did not accurately reflect the nature of the NSA program. Oh, and the demographics were once again weighted in favor of Democrats.

Click READ MORE to see us (once again) utterly demolish an "Old Media" poll.

But here's what you won't see in the news stories. - the demography of the poll respondents

First, 13% of respondents aren't even registerd to vote, and of those that were registered, 19% didn't go to the polls in 2004. So right away you know that 32% of the total respondents didn't vote in 2004.

1. Party Leanings - The poll is slanted towards Democrats. Even though the voters in the 2004 election were split evenly at 37% between Republicans and Democrats, this poll is 34%(D), 29%(R) and 33%(I)

2. 2004 Vote - In 2004, President Bush won by just over 3%. In this poll, of those who did vote in 2004, the percentages are even.

3. Weekend Poll - Three of the polling nights were weekend nights, and the poll director of the Washington Post has indicated these nights do not favor Republicans.

4. Religion - Next, a whopping 17% of respondents had "no" religion, while in 2004 only 10% of voters had "no" religion, and they voted overwhelmingly for Kerry (+36%). Additionally, Catholic voters made up 27% of the electorate in 2004, and voted for Bush by +5%, but in this poll, they are only 22% of the sample.

5. Age of Respondents In this poll 22% of the respondents were between 18-29, even though the 18-29 year olds (a slightly smaller demo) only made up 17% of the electorate in the 2004 election.

6. Marital Status - In this poll, only 57% of respondents are married. In 2004, 63% of voters were married, and voted 57-42% for Bush.

Now let's get to the slanted questions. For example, Question 63 reads as follows:

Quote:
63. 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 poll result says that respondents disapproved by a margin of 50-46%. Perhaps if the question adequately reflected the reality of the situation, it would have mentioned that the "calls in the US" were not only in the US, but rather that one of the people on the call was overseas, and a suspected terrorist. But by using the term "in the US", the respondent could easily take it to mean that the phone calls were purely domestic, and given the fact that only 22% of respondents are paying "very close attention" to the story, it wouldn't be surprising if respondents thought, from the question, that the calls were purely domestic. Even with that the gap in only 4%

When the same question is asked, but includes wording about the reason for the wiretaps ("to reduce the threat of terrorism") people approve by a 7% margin.
Quote:
62. 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?

But again notice that nowhere is it mentioned that the other caller was overseas or a suspected terrorist.

According to the Times story accompanying the poll responses "vary" based on the wording of the question.

That is true of course, but the story neglects to mention that the wording of any of the questions doesn't include a misleading fact - that the calls are "in the US". I'd like to see the response if they actually asked the question about one of the callers being as suspected overseas terrorist, the approval numbers would skyrocket.

Why do I say that, because when asked the question "In order to reduce the threat of terrorism, would you be willing or not willing to allow government agencies to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of Americans that the government is suspicious of?", almost 70% of the respondents would approve.

Thus, I think the Bush administration certainly doing the right thing by taking the offensive in defending the NSA program as a necessary tool to keep us safe. If the Democrats think this is their "big issue" then they are sadly mistaken. The bottom line is that by keeping up this line of attack on the President, they're just reaffirming people's belief that the Democrats can't be trusted with national security.

The Times story also makes a big deal of Congress's low ratings and warns it might spell trouble for the GOP in 2006. However, they neglect to point out that when asked about their own representative (you know, the only one they can vote on) they approve of him or her 57-29%.

Again, we're not saying the GOP doesn't have difficulty. Nor are we saying that the poll is "rigged". What we are saying however, is that when the MSM start talking about what these poll results mean for 2006, don't listen because in all likelihood they bear no resemblance to those who will actually turn out. Yes, mid-term turnouts are lower and different than Presidential election years, and are more reliant on "base" voters, the Democrats have a tough road ahead. Further, we want to caution spineless GOP politicians not to alter their conservative programs or ideals based on the results of a poll because they think it spells electoral disaster."

http://www.anklebitingpundits.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3040

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