A poll by The Washington Post and ABC News released today is the latest to examine the public’s impression of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
Three polls-including the Washington Post-ABC News joint effort-purport to show that Americans widely disagree with the Court’s ruling and support legislative fixes to water down the January decision.
So, it’s panic time in the free political speech movement, right? Wrong.
(1) Two of the three polls on the Citizens United decision contained questions arguably biased against the Court’s ruling (the third poll did not even release the questions asked).
To its credit, the Washington Post-ABC News poll released the two questions it asked “1,004 randomly selected adults” from Feb. 4-8.
The first question reads, “Changing topics, do you support or oppose the recent ruling by the Supreme Court that says corporations and unions can spend as much money as they want to help political candidates win elections?” [emphasis added]
The framing of this question implies that corporations—and unions—will spend money in concert with candidates to aid their campaigns.
There are two problems with this question: (1) All spending must be independent of candidates and parties, whereas the opposite is implied by the question; and (2) Most political observers, lawyers and campaign finance experts expect these ads to be largely critical of candidates-especially incumbents. In a time of increasing frustration with incumbents (the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll also shows a 71 percent disapproval of Congress) implying these ads will aid candidates and incumbents inherently imposes a negative bias.
CCP President Sean Parnell has more on the language of the Washington Post-ABC News poll on CCP’s blog. Patton Boggs attorney Bill McGinley also criticizes poll questions at his blog, ExpressAdvocacy.com.
The Argus Reid Public Opinion poll of “1,003 American adults” conducted online from Jan. 27-28 contained a remarkably similar question: “From what you have seen, read or heard, do you agree or disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision to allow corporations to spend freely to support candidates in federal elections.” [emphasis added]
This question is more biased than the Post-ABC News question because it omits the reference to unions (maximizing the tendency of some to react to an anti-corporate sentiment), but it shares the bias problems regarding framing the question as an incumbent-candidate boost.
The Argus poll, though, contains a very useful piece of information that explains why the framing of these questions is so relevant: a plurality of Americans have not followed this case at all: 41 percent have not heard of it, 27 percent have not followed it too closely, 22 percent followed it moderately closely and only 10 percent followed it very closely. (In light of this data, it’s hard to believe that only 2 percent of respondents in the Washington Post-ABC News poll had no opinion of the ruling). So, “32 per cent of Americans say they have followed this story in the news moderately or very closely, while 68 per cent either have not followed it closely or not followed it at all.” What’s more, the 32 percent of people who have followed the decision are not necessarily likely or registered voters, which further dilutes the usefulness of the results for political or legislative purposes.
While the questions in the Washington Post-ABC News poll and the Argus poll are arguably biased, the third recent campaign finance poll didn’t even release the most important questions. This poll, part of a $4 million lobbying and P.R. campaign by pro-campaign finance regulation groups, was paid for by Common Cause and Public Citizen and conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research along with McKinnon Media. It surveyed 805 likely 2010 voters from Feb. 2-4.
The poll supposedly shows that voters opposed the Court’s ruling by a 2-to-1 margin, but the pollsters didn’t bother to release the poll question about the decision. This poll is the least credible, partly because it failed to release language and because it’s part of a $4 million P.R. push to put a “positive spin” on the Citizens United ruling, as Mother Jones reported in December:
In a confidential internal memo obtained by Mother Jones, Common Cause and Public Campaign, two leading reform groups, warn, “Without an aggressive media effort, reporters will likely call a bad decision in Citizens United another sign that campaign finance reform is a fool’s errand.” According to the memo, the groups’ strategy includes combining some staff from both outfits under one campaign umbrella and spending $4 million dollars over six months to put a positive spin on a negative Citizens United decision and push for public financing of congressional elections.
(2) Campaign finance is an incredibly complex legal framework, and most Americans have an incentive to remain rationally ignorant about the laws and regulations at issue.
Several campaign finance polls in recent years have found contradictory opinions. For example, several polls on taxpayer funded campaigns have shown that candidates favor bland statements like “getting special interests out of politics” but oppose using their tax dollars to fund candidates they disfavor. Voluntary check-offs for the presidential public financing system have dropped to a low of 8 percent, even though the check-off does not increase the tax paid.
A recent example: A University of Texas YouGov/Polimetrix online poll in October 2009 of 2,100 adults contained remarkably contradictory results and evidence that most Americans have little knowledge of cam
paign finance laws.
Excerpted findings: Only 20 percent knew John Roberts is the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. 51 percent said they didn’t know enough about McCain-Feingold to have an opinion; another 10 percent had no opinion anyway or refused to answer. Only two percent knew what the federal contribution limit was (although the “correct answer” is arguably incorrect because a person may give $4,800 to a candidate in a “single election cycle”—including the primary and general elections). 60 percent erroneously thought corporations could legally contribute directly to federal candidates.
When given a detailed and somewhat legalistic description of the facts of Citizens United, 25 percent thought the non-profit deserved First Amendment protection; 31 percent disagreed.
But a plurality (45-35 percent), said—assuming full disclosure—individuals should be allowed to contribute an unlimited amount of money to candidates’ campaigns. Another plurality, though, (49-25 percent) said candidates should be allowed to run with taxpayer financing and individual and PAC contributions to candidates should be banned.
One of the most recent three campaign finance polls illustrates these contradictions, too. The Argus poll produces a result that seems to contradict its main purported finding (that most Americans disagree with the Court’s ruling). It found that, “45 per cent of respondents agree with a statement issued by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who claimed that corporations should have the right to express themselves about political candidates and issues up until election day. Forty-two per cent of Americans disagree with this notion.” [emphasis added]
(3) President Obama, congressional Democrats and pro-regulation groups have incessantly demagogued the Court’s decision, which no doubt impacted public opinion.
When the nation’s leading political voices consistently repeat a storyline, it has an impact on public opinion—even when their comments are demonstrably untrue.
For example, the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact.com, a project of the St. Petersburg Times, rated comments made by Sen. Chuck Schumer, the sponsor of legislation to legislatively overturn Citizens United, as “barely true.” PolitiFact.com rated State of the Union comments by President Obama as “barely true.”
Repetition of falsehoods and unfounded horror stories about multimillion-or multibillion dollar-expenditures by foreign interests and mega-corporations certainly affects the opinions of Americans on this issue, especially the 68 percent of people who have not followed the case closely or at all.
(4) These polls measure vague sentiments after pollsters press for views; they don’t measure voting behavior or how campaign finance affects support for candidates.
The Public Citizen-Common Cause poll memo boldly declares: “Congressional incumbents who take seriously voters’ support for these proposals are likely to be rewarded in November at the ballot box; those who oppose these reforms do so at their own peril.”
Nonsense.
In the 2008 presidential election voters could choose between a candidate who accepted public financing and made strict campaign finance regulation the cause of his legislative career and a candidate who raised nearly $750 million from private interests; voters certainly didn’t punish Barack Obama-or reward John McCain-for that.
