Econintersect: There was a WTF moment this week when three polls announced results which were purported to be accurate reflections of the American popluation within an unceratinty of a very few percent. One poll indicates that over 2/3 of Americans favor not raising the U.S. debt ceiling. A second poll found less than half (44%) were so disposed. And another poll found that nearly 3/4 (74%) felt that shutting down the government for a few weeks would cause major problems or crisis.
Some or all of the following polls are obviously having sampling problems or question formulation problems. Or the polls are being taken in different countries.
The Reason-Rupe September 2013 National Survey finds that 70% of Americans oppose raising the debt ceiling; 55% do not support the raise even if the U.S. defaults on its debt.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll finds 44% oppose raising the debt limit.
A CNN survey found that 62% of Americans feel that failure to extend the debt ceiling would cause major problems or a crisis for the country. The same poll reported 49% thought a government shutdown of a few days would cause crisis or major problems. If the shutdown lasted for a few weeks the number shot up to 74%.
So, let’s see: 70% oppose raising the debt limit and 74% feel that shutting down the government for a few weeks would cause major problems or crisis. Now that is a real WTF.
One clue about the thinking comes from the Reason-Rupe poll. Those repondents gave a 76% affrimative answer to the government spends too much money. Here is an excerpt from reason.com:
In response to open-ended questions, Americans told Reason-Rupe the government wastes 60 cents out of every dollar they pay in federal taxes and they’d cut federal spending by 30 percent across the board.
Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) 2013 budget plan aims to balance the federal budget over 10 years, but Reason-Rupe finds the public wants it done sooner than that. In fact, 40 percent of Americans say Congress should balance the budget immediately, 32 percent say the budget should be balanced over five years, 16 percent feel it should be balanced over 10 years, and 7 percent say Congress should not worry about balancing the budget.
Questions that presumably were not considered by poll respondents would include:
- Do you support a reduction in GDP by 3.85%?
That is exactly what the elimination for the CBO estimated deficit for the current fiscal year would cause provided there is no follow-on spending multiplier (there most likely is). This would be close to the decline of 4.3% during the Great Recession. I would only take a multiplier of 1.12 to produce a GDP decline larger than 4.3%.
Another question that might have well been considered:
- Where do you think money used for economic activity comes from?
The first question shoud have offered a yes or no choice (or possibly “don’t know” as well). It would be most informative to make the second question open ended.
Why don’t polls really find out what Americans know as well as what their opinions are? How many people giving opinions have no idea what they are talking about?
Sources:
- 44 Percent Of Americans Don’t Want To Raise Debt Ceiling, Poll Finds (Ariel Edward-Levy, The Huffington Post, 13 September 2o13)
- Poll: Americans Oppose Raising the Debt Ceiling Even If U.S. Defaults and Say Government Wastes 60 Cents of Every Tax Dollar (Emily Ekins, reason.com, 12 September 2013)
- Poll: 44 percent of Americans oppose raising debt ceiling (Domenicao Montanaro, NBC News, 13 September 2013)
