Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Public Opinion: Myths and Reality

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Cheney, of course, fairs worse:

Voters who think Cheney should be impeached 43%
Voters who think Cheney has committed an impeachable offense   52%
Voters who think Cheney has abused his powers 70%

(The ARG results h/t Atrios via dKos.)

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  1. KBusch, I followed the link.  Do you think the wording was fair?  I mean: if the wording were slightly changed, do you think the results would be significantly different? 

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    Question:
    Which one of these four statements do you agree with about President Bush:
    1. President Bush has not abused his powers as president.

    2. President Bush has abused his powers as president, but the abuses are not serious enough to warrant impeachment under the Constitution.

    3. President Bush has abused his powers as president which rise to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution, but he should not be impeached.

    4. President Bush has abused his powers as president which rise to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution and he should be impeached and removed from office.

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    Seems like the question is designed to elicit a negative response, because there’s no “Bush’s version of the story.”

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    What if the question contained both his claims and the counterclaims.  Something like, I dunno:

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    “George Bush has told the American people that while pre-war intelligence about the existence of WMD in Iraq was wrong, he invaded with the best information he had at the time in order to protect our country.  Critics claim that he abused his powers, deliberately conspiring with the vice president to mislead the American people and Congress in order to get support for the war.  Should Congress impeach Bush for this and other reasons — including illegally approving torture and wiretaps?”

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    Don’t you think opinion polls should have a sentence that contains “each side”?

      • there were three negative responses versus the one positive.  I’m with GGW that this appears to have been some slanted methodology.  Common sense to me seems that there should be three levels of positive and negative responses.  There could have been some additional positive answers like these:

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        -President Bush acted beyond the powers explicitly given to him in the constitution but his intent was to protect America

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        -The prewar intelligence was faulty and that led to the abuse of power by the President so he is not responsible the intelligence agencies are.

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        By the way, I’m not saying I agree with any of these.  I just think the methodology of the poll was a little flawed.

        • is that they contain more than one element, and so it would be less clear how to interpret the results. 

          • I really didn’t but much thought into them.  My point was simply that three negative responses versus one positive is bad methodology.  If I were putting together the poll I would have three positive versus three negative and they would be in random order, not order of severity. 

            • why ask the questions in random order?  people are accustomed to answering on a scale of 1 to 5, or whatever.  if you mixed up the “severity” of the options, you would just confuse and/or frustrate the respondent.  they would probable be more likely to hang up on you then.

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              as for 3 negative responses versus 1 positive, just how many ways can the positive option be asked?
              1.  bush did everything right.
              2.  bush really did everything right.
              3.  bush really, really did everything right.
              ??!!

        • You seem to be implying that people move towards the median answer, so the median answer should be neutral. But the results of the poll show that most people picked one of the extremes. The least common answer was the second option. There is no evidence that people choose the middle answer, and in fact the evidence is that people tend to pick one of the most extreme answers.

        • … the questions were designed to measure the depths of agreement with a negative descriptor.  How much less ‘wrong’ do you want to measure besides ‘no wrong at all’.

    • Your modification only gives Bush’s side for one argument for impeaching him. It also focusses the question on whether he should be impeached for that particular action. If the question is asked as you wrote it, most people will tell you whether they think Bush should be impeached for lying about pre-war intelligence because the question is asked directly after discussing that and before mentioning any other possible reasons. This is not a minor modification, it is a completely different question.

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      The question as asked does not accuse Bush of any particular crime. The question does not contain reference to anything that Bush has or has not done. It doesn’t have any sides to any events. Unless it is preceded by a discussion of arguments for and/or against impeaching Bush, it is already a neutral question. If you had asked the same question in August of 2001, almost nobody would have said that Bush had abused his power. If you asked the same question (with the name changed of course) at the end of most President’s terms, you would not have gotten a substantial number of people claiming the President had abused his power or should be impeached.

      • His question nor the alternative answers I gave are the issue.  The issue is that the question may be neutral but the responses are not balanced.  There is only one positive answer versus three negative.  Further, they are asked in order of positive to most severe.  None of this seems to be good methodology for the survey. 

          • I never thought it was only people on the fringe who thought Bush should be impeached, so the results are actually where I thought it would be.  But the results also show that this comes down to a partisan issue for the most part with the majority of the Dems thinking Bush committed an impeachable offense and the majority of the Reps thinking he didn’t.  And the truth is that probably only 10% of those interviewed are informed enough to really understand the issue. 

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            I would love to have seen as a follow up question just to gauge how informed people are “was Bill Clinton impeached?” because I would put the over/under at 15% saying yes and bet big on the under.

            • sure, 64% or republicans have no problem with bush on this issue.  not a big surprise.  but 36% do, with varying degrees of what they think should be done about it.  that’s not a very clean split along partisan lines, imo.  but i suppose this is one of those glass halh full/empty judgments.

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              interesting your assumption about how well informed the interviewees really are.  i could make the opposite statement that 90% are informed enough to really understand the issue.  that would be as valid as your statement.  in other words, it’s a throw away statement.  unless you back it up with something concrete, it’s only possible value is as an attempt to make someone doubt the validity of the poll when you have no better way of doing so.

            • …Impeachment is irrelevant.  Impeachment requires only a majority in the House.  Unless you have any hope of attaining a 2/3 majority in the Senate, mere impeachment is an empty exercise. 

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              The BClinton exercise should have shown you that.

          1. Bush committed impeachable offenses, was right to do so, and so should not be impeached.
          2. Our safety is more important than constitutional safeguards.
          3. Bush should be commended for aggressively defending America.

          These all sound somewhat odd and even more leading.

            1. I prefer the Bush on “Frank TV.” 

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            Anyway….

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            Here’s a Clinton poll question, done by Pew Research in 1998. 

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            “Bill Clinton has told the American people that he had an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky but misled the public earlier to protect his family. In your opinion, should Clinton’s statement be enough to end the matter OR do you think Congress should still consider impeachment hearings?”

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            That’s the question in its entirety. 

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            1. I mean: compare!  For Bush, NO reference to “his version”; For Clinton, ONLY reference to “his version.”  Of COURSE that sways the results. 

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            It’s plausible that there is mainstream support for Bush impeachment, but this poll doesn’t convince me. 

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            2. Let’s stipulate, for the sake of argument, that if asked differently the number drops to, say, 15% of the public.  What’s the cutoff for “mainstream”? 

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            3. Irrespective of the poll, KB, do you actually favor beginning impeachment proceedings?  If yes,

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            a. Do you like the “let’s throw a ton of charges at him and see what happens” approach, or would you narrow it to a specific charge?

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            b. Are you not concerned about a trend where each party tries to impeach every president, and what that would mean?  Isn’t there some prisoner dilemma here — ie, Republicans led a total mockery of an impeachment of Clinton, but it may be that even a “more legitimate” impeachment effort isn’t good the nation? 

              1. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say that the poll says anyone’s side of the story.

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              2. 15% of the public is not mainstream. I’d expect that your methodological objections might sway the results  by as much as 10%. That’s still mainstream. I’d say the mainstream cutoff is somewhere between 30% and 35%.

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              3. Irrespective of the poll, KB, do you actually favor beginning impeachment proceedings? Yes.

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              a. Specific charges. However, we must keep in mind that this White House is the most secretive White House ever — and when their secrets have been revealed the smell has not been of roses.

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              b. This impeachment could be for the good of the nation. Lying to get us into a war is major in terms of lives lost and billions wasted. The FISA violations, the denial of habeas corpus, and the violation of principles going back at least to Nuremberg are very, very serious. They only seem tit-for-tat because of our corrupted media culture, but they assuredly are not.

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              One part of the problem, though, is that Democrats just do not have the megaphones or the PR oomph to get their message out. So the corrupted media culture will turn impeachment into three parts sporting event, one part gossip. It would take effort to turn it into a battle based on principle.

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              Having the House pass an impeachment bill without explaining it clearly to the American people will be counter-productive in exactly the ways you list.

    • GGW, you, as usual, raise a valid methodological point. I wonder if there is a tendency for surveys to get responses in the middle of the survey positions. The middle of this survey was certainly off on the breach/impeach side.

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      Your proposed question actually narrows the reasons one might impeach Bush. Violating FISA, politicizing the DOJ, using signing statements to overrule the legislative branch, and having a monarchical doctrine of the executive branch rank pretty high for many of us.

      That said, the conventional wisdom is that an openness to impeaching Bush or Cheney is a fringe position.

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      Whatever its methodological flaws, this poll demonstrates that support for impeachment is not fringe. If not a majority position, it is at least a mainstream one.

      • This poll shows that impeaching Bush comes down to party affiliation.  64% of Republicans think Bush did nothing wrong while 50% of Dems think he should be impeached.  The independents are almost split at 29% to 34%, respectively. 

        • A lot of other polling shows independents leaning toward Democratic positions. This is one of the few where they’re at the midpoint.

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          Curious that.

      • … could ask individual policy questions on a scale that went from approval to impeachable.  I don’t think the list of policies itself would be very flattering though.

  2. …but a clear majority of people who answered the phone.

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    I’ll wager that most folks who have caller ID do not participate in these polls.

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    Caller ID is an optional paid service, so a particular demographic is probably under-represented in the poll.

    • We could maybe just ask you?

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      Or to state it differently and without the snark:

      1. What evidence do you have the methodology is flawed — other than maybe not liking the results?
      2. What method do you propose to get to know public opinion?
      3. It is a well-known phenomenon in social psychology that widely held thoughts about “what everyone is doing” or “what everyone is thinking” are often wrong. Neither your nor my “intuition” can possibly be more reliable than a professional poll.

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