Journalists Misread Delayed Poll as Sticker Shock on Biden Bill

Gallup (10/14/21) noted that “the reversal in opinions on government activity…may simply reflect a return to normal attitudes.”

Last week, a Gallup poll reported that Americans had reverted to a long-time pattern of preferring fewer, rather than more, government efforts to deal with the nation’s problems. Many in the media misinterpreted the poll to mean the public has soured on President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill—in part because of the timing of the poll, and in part because they didn’t recognize a peculiar characteristic of public opinion.

The Gallup poll reported that a majority of Americans, 52%, now feel that “the government is doing too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses,” while only 43% “want the government to do more to solve the country’s problems.”

These figures are almost the reverse of last year’s numbers, when Gallup found 54% of Americans wanting government to do more, while 41% felt it was doing too much.

This year’s poll was conducted September 1–17, during the very same period that a Fox News poll (9/12–15/21) and a Pew poll (9/13–19/21) found large margins of support (by 17 and 24 points, respectively) for the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation package.

On the surface, the Fox and Pew polls, as well as other polls about the same time, seem to undermine Gallup’s findings. Results of the Gallup poll, however, were not released until a month later (10/14/21), giving the false impression that it was a more recent development in public opinion.

Swift media reaction

Catherine Rampell (Washington Post, 10/14/21) cited a CBS poll finding that “one of the few things Americans say they have heard about the bill is its huge size”—then ignored the fact that that poll found 54% in favor of that “huge” bill.

Reaction in the media was swift. No fewer than four journalists from the Washington Post alone—Catherine Rampell (10/14/21), Philip Bump (10/15/21), Dan Balz (10/16/21) and Henry Olsen (10/18/21)—cited the poll as evidence that Biden’s Build Back Better legislation was now in trouble.

Rampell wrote, for example: “Inconvenient but true: Americans want government to do less. Not more. Democrats cannot afford to just hand-wave this problem away.”

And Bump argued that:

those advocating for Biden to leverage his mandate to go big on spending need to recognize that the mandate has eroded, and that the large group of independents is skeptical of Biden and the broad strokes of his policy agenda, even if they endorse the specifics.

The New York Times editorial board (10/16/21) lamented the poll result as evidence that support for the reconciliation package had declined:

But it ought not to be dictated by the results of the latest public policy poll. Democrats must consider public opinion, of course, but they were ultimately elected to enact laws they regard as necessary. They must act in the public interest, not in the interest of public opinion.

CNN‘s Chris Cillizza (10/14/21) announced bluntly that this was “bad news for Joe Biden.”

Several conservative and right-wing media picked up on the CNN story, one site upping the ante with the headline that the Gallup poll was “VERY Bad News for Democrats.”

Ideologically conservative, operationally liberal

Political observers have been noting for half a century that while “most Americans agreed with broad statements of conservative principles… large majorities of Americans generally supported activist government.”

The phenomenon revealed by these apparently conflicting polls—that Americans say in general they want less government spending, but actually support a wide range of increased government policies—was first noted more than a half century ago. As political scientist Alan Abramowitz (HuffPost, 12/2/10) described in 2010:

More than 40 [now 50] years ago, two pioneers in the study of American public opinion, Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril, observed that Americans tend to be ideological conservatives but operational liberals. In their groundbreaking 1967 book, The Political Beliefs of Americans, Free and Cantril found that even in the heyday of modern liberalism, the 1960s, most Americans agreed with broad statements of conservative principles.

At the same time, however, when it came to specific programs addressing societal needs and problems, programs such as Medicare and federal aid to education, Free and Cantril found that large majorities of Americans generally supported activist government.

Just two years ago, Pew (4/11/19) found a similar pattern. One question showed that Americans were evenly divided between support for small government with fewer services (47%), on the one hand, and bigger government, more services (47%) on the other.

Another question asked respondents to indicate for a list of 13 different policy areas if they wanted to increase, decrease or keep spending the same. For all 13 items, more Americans supported an increase over a decrease. For ten of the items, the margin of support for an increase over a decrease ranged from 30 to 60 percentage points. Pew’s conclusion was an understatement: “Little Support for Reductions in Federal Spending.”

And now, the Gallup poll, contrasting with the many other polls cited here, once again produces the pattern found by Free and Cantril.

Timing the shift

The problem for journalists in interpreting the Gallup poll was not only its delayed release. It was also the comparison with the 2020 poll. As Gallup noted:

Last year marked only the second time in Gallup’s 29-year trend that at least half of Americans endorsed an active role for the government on this item. The other pro-government response came in the weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, amid heightened concern about terrorism and a surge in trust in government.

So, there was a “shift” between 2020 and 2021, but it’s not at all clear when that shift actually occurred. The journalists noted earlier in this article who cited the poll mostly attributed the shift to the public recently becoming aware of the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package. But that’s a leap.

Gallup suggested that the unusual finding in 2020 was “likely a response to the coronavirus pandemic, and in particular to then-President Donald Trump’s approach to handling it.” The shift in opinion back to the norm, though, could well have occurred once Trump was out of office. Or anytime between September 2020 and September 2021.

We can’t assume it was a recent shift, or that it had anything to do with Biden’s agenda.

The recent spate of polls reaffirm an important lesson for those who follow public opinion: What Americans say they want in principle may not be what they’ll actually support in practice.