#AP-NORC Poll

[sayruq]

Half of U.S. adults say Israel’s 15-week-old military campaign in Gaza has “gone too far,” a finding driven mainly by growing disapproval among Republicans and political independents, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Broadly, the poll shows support for Israel and the Biden administration’s handling of the situation ebbing slightly further across the board. The poll shows 31% of U.S. adults approve of Biden’s handling of the conflict, including just 46% of Democrats. That’s as an earlier spike in support for Israel following the Hamas attacks Oct. 7 sags.

[probablyasocialecologist]

In the context of what we’ve learned from our investigations into opt-in polls, we took particular notice of a recent online opt-in survey that had a startling finding about Holocaust denial among young Americans. The survey, fielded in December 2023, reported that 20% of U.S. adults under 30 agree with the statement, “The Holocaust is a myth.” This alarming finding received widespread attention from the news media and on social networks. From a survey science perspective, the finding deserved a closer look. It raised both of the red flags in the research literature about bogus respondents: It focused on a rare attitude (Holocaust denial), and it involved a subgroup frequently “infiltrated” by bogus respondents (young adults). Other questions asked in that December opt-in poll also pointed to a need for scrutiny. In the same poll, about half of adults under 30 (48%) expressed opposition to legal abortion. This result is dramatically at odds with rigorous polling from multiple survey organizations that consistently finds the rate of opposition among young adults to be much lower. In an April 2023 Pew Research Center survey, for instance, 26% of U.S. adults under 30 said abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. This was 13 points lower than the share among older Americans (39%). Our estimate for young adults was similar to ones from other, more recent probability-based surveys, such as an AP-NORC survey from June 2023 (27%) and a KFF survey from November 2023 (28%). We attempted to replicate the opt-in poll’s findings in our own survey, fielded in mid-January 2024 on Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel. Unlike the December opt-in survey, our survey panel is recruited by mail – rather than online – using probability-based sampling. And in fact, our findings were quite different. Rather than 20%, we found that 3% of adults under 30 agree with the statement “The Holocaust is a myth.” (This percentage is the same for every other age group as well.) Had this been the original result, it is unlikely that it would have generated the same kind of media attention on one of the most sensitive possible topics. Likewise, our survey found substantial differences from the December poll on support for legal abortion. In the opt-in survey, roughly half of young adults (48%) said abortion should always be illegal or should only be legal in special circumstances, such as when the life of the mother is in danger. In our survey, 23% said so. These differences in estimates for young adults are what we would expect to see – based on past studies – if there were a large number of bogus respondents in the opt-in poll claiming to be under the age of 30. These respondents likely were not answering the questions based on their true opinions. The takeaway from our recent survey experiment is not that Holocaust denial in the United States is nonexistent or that younger and older Americans all have the same opinions when it comes to antisemitism or the Middle East. For example, our survey experiment found that young adults in the U.S. are less likely than older ones to say the state of Israel has the right to exist. This is broadly consistent with other rigorous polling showing that young people are somewhat less supportive of Israel – and more supportive of Palestinians – than older Americans. Rather, the takeaway is that reporting on complex and sensitive matters such as these requires the use of rigorous survey methods to avoid inadvertently misleading the public, particularly when studying the attitudes of young people.

[follow-up-news]

A solid majority of Americans oppose a federal abortion ban as a rising number support access to abortions for any reason, a new poll finds, highlighting a politically perilous situation for candidates who oppose abortion rights as the November election draws closer. Around 6 in 10 Americans think their state should generally allow a person to obtain a legal abortion if they don’t want to be pregnant for any reason, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s an increase from June 2021, a year before the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to the procedure, when about half of Americans thought legal abortion should be possible under these circumstances. Americans are largely opposed to the strict bans that have taken effect in Republican-controlled states since the high court’s ruling two years ago. Full bans, with limited exceptions, have gone into effect in 14 GOP-led states, while three other states prohibit abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, before women often realize they’re pregnant. They are also overwhelmingly against national abortion bans and restrictions. And views toward abortion — which have long been relatively stable — may be getting more permissive.

[thoughts-while-i-walk-my-dog]

AP headline: Majority of Democrats think Kamala Harris would make a good president, AP-NORC poll shows

I have great news for those voters then! If Biden ever actually is too old to do the job, guess who immediately takes over!!

[beardedmrbean]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans view college campuses as far friendlier to liberals than to conservatives when it comes to free speech, with adults across the political spectrum seeing less tolerance for those on the right, according to a new poll.

Overall, 47% of adults say liberals have “a lot” of freedom to express their views on college campuses, while just 20% said the same of conservatives, according to polling from the The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression.

Republicans perceive a stronger bias on campuses against conservatives, but Democrats see a difference too — about 4 in 10 Democrats say liberals can speak their minds freely on campuses, while about 3 in 10 Democrats say conservatives can do so.

“If you’re a Republican or lean Republican, you’re unabashedly wrong, they shut you down,” said Rhonda Baker, 60, of Goldsboro, North Carolina, who voted for former President Donald Trump and has a son in college. “If they hold a rally, it’s: ‘The MAGA’s coming through.’ It’s: ‘The KKK is coming through.’”

Debates over First Amendment rights have occasionally flared on college campuses in recent years, with conflicts arising over guest speakers who express polarizing views, often from the political right.

Stanford University became a flashpoint this year when students shouted down a conservative judge who was invited to speak. More recently, a conservative Princeton University professor was drowned out while discussing free speech at Washington College, a small school in Maryland.

At the same time, Republican lawmakers in dozens of states have proposed bills aiming to limit public colleges from teaching topics considered divisive or liberal. Just 30% of Americans say states should be able to restrict what professors at state universities teach, the poll found, though support was higher among Republicans.

Overall, Republicans see a clear double standard on college campuses. Just 9% said conservatives can speak their minds, while 58% said liberals have that freedom, according to the polling. They were also slightly less likely than Americans overall to see campuses as respectful and inclusive places for conservatives.

Chris Gauvin, a Republican who has done construction work on campuses, believes conservative voices are stifled. While working at Yale University, he was once stopped by pro-LGBTQ+ activists who asked for his opinion, he said.

“They asked me how I felt, so I figured I’d tell them. I spoke in a normal tone, I didn’t get excited or upset,” said Gauvin, 58, of Manchester, Connecticut. “But it proceeded with 18 to 20 people who were suddenly very irritated and agitated. It just exploded.”

He took a lesson from the experience: “I learned to be very quiet there.”

Republicans in Congress have raised alarms, with a recent House report warning of “the long-standing and pervasive degradation of First Amendment rights” at U.S. colleges. Some in the GOP have called for federal legislation requiring colleges to protect free speech and punish those who infringe on others’ rights.

Nicholas Fleisher, who chairs an academic freedom committee for the American Association of University Professors, said public perception is skewed by the infrequent cases when protesters go too far.

“The reality is that there’s free speech for everyone on college campuses,” said Fleisher, a linguistics professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. “In conversations within classrooms, people are free to speak their minds. And they do.”

Officials at PEN America, a free speech group, say most students welcome diverse views. But as the nation has become more politically divided, so have college campuses, said Kristen Shahverdian, senior manager for education at PEN.

“There’s this polarization that just continues to grow and build across our country, and colleges and universities are a part of that ecosystem,” she said.

Morgan Ashford, a Democrat in an online graduate program at Troy University in Alabama, said she thinks people can express themselves freely on campus regardless of politics or skin color. Still, she sees a lack of tolerance for the LGBTQ+ community in her Republican state where the governor has passed anti-LGBTQ legislation.

“I think there have to be guidelines” around hate speech, said Ashford. “Because some people can go overboard.”

When it comes to protesting speakers, most Americans say it should be peaceful. About 8 in 10 say it’s acceptable to engage in peaceful, non-disruptive protest at a campus event, while just 15% say it’s OK to prevent a speaker from communicating with the audience, the poll found.

“If they don’t like it, they can get up and walk out,” said Linda Woodward, 71, a Democrat in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas.

Mike Darlington, a real estate appraiser who votes Republican, said drowning out speakers violates the virtues of a free society.

“It seems to me a very, very selfish attitude that makes students think, ‘If you don’t think the way I do, then your thoughts are unacceptable,’” said Darlington, 58, of Chesterfield County, Virginia.

The protest at Stanford was one of six campus speeches across the U.S. that ended in significant disruption this year, with another 11 last year, according to a database by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech group.

Those cases, while troubling, are one symptom of a broader problem, said Ilya Shapiro, a conservative legal scholar who was shouted down during a speech last year at the University of California’s law school. He says colleges have drifted away from the classic ideal of academia as a place for free inquiry.

An even bigger problem than speakers being disrupted by protesters is “students and faculty feeling that they can’t be open in their views. They can’t even discuss certain subjects,” said Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute think tank.

About three in five Americans (62%) say that a major purpose of higher education is to support the free exchange and debate of different ideas and values. Even more U.S. adults say college’s main purpose is to teach students specific skills (82%), advance knowledge and ideas (78%) or teach students to be critical thinkers (76%). Also, 66% said a major purpose is to create a respectful and inclusive learning environment.

“I believe it should be solely to prepare you to enter the workforce,” said Gene VanZandt, 40, a Republican who works in shipbuilding in Hampton, Virginia. “I think our colleges have gone too far off the path of what their function was.”

The poll finds that majorities of Americans think students and professors, respectively, should not be allowed to express racist, sexist or anti-LGBTQ views on campus, with slightly more Republicans than Democrats saying those types of views should be allowed. There was slightly more tolerance for students expressing those views than for professors.

About 4 in 10 said students should be permitted to invite academic speakers accused of using offensive speech, with 55% saying they should not. There was a similar split when asked whether professors should be allowed to invite those speakers.

Darlington believes students and professors should be able to discuss controversial topics, but there are limits.

“Over-the-top, overtly racist, hateful stuff — no. You shouldn’t be allowed to do that freely,” he said.

___

The poll of 1,095 adults was conducted Sept. 7-11, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

[webntrmpt]

How utterly stupid and frightening

[thedurvin]

Y’all wanna hear something hilarious and for once good about American politics

Republicans have fallen for Trump’s bullshit about the elections being rigged enough that an increasing number of them are considering just not bothering to vote

[plethoraworldatlas]

A majority of U.S. voters want both President Joe Biden and Republican nominee Donald Trump to drop out of the 2024 presidential contest, with nearly two-thirds of Democrats favoring the Democratic incumbent's withdrawal amid mounting concerns over his mental fitness, a poll published Wednesday revealed.

The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey of 1,253 U.S. adults conducted between July 11-15 found that 70% of all respondents want Biden to step aside in favor of an alternative nominee and 57% think Trump should quit the race. Broken down by partisan affiliation, 73% of Republicans, 70% of Independents, and 65% of Democrats want Biden to stand down, while 26% of Republicans, 51% of Independents, and 86% of Democrats say Trump should withdraw.

"I just feel like these two individuals are a sad choice," Alexi Mitchell, a 35-year-old civil servant in Virginia and self-described Democratic-leaning Independent, toldThe Associated Press, adding that Biden has "put us in a bad position where Trump might win."

[maswartz]

They only polled 1253 people.

That's it. That's all the people in the poll who want Biden out. PS: The same poll said 57% of republicans want Trump out but funny how they ignore that

[stele3]

40% of Americans now say that Israel has gone too far in their war against Hamas. Among Democrats that number is 58%.

Keep pushing. This represents a huge shift from just two weeks ago, when only 25% of Democrats said that Israel's response had "gone too far." The number has now more than doubled. Keep the pressure on, let your representatives know how you feel.

Meanwhile, fucking 1 in 3 Republicans still think that Israel hasn't gone far enough. Jesus. That number has dropped a bit from two weeks ago, though, when it was 40%. So even Republicans are starting to have second thoughts.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

"Keep calm and carry on!"

August 17, 2023

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

          As Trump is inundated with unwanted publicity over his fourth indictment, President Biden is making the rounds to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act. But Biden’s efforts are buried so far down in the news feed that it is difficult to find his remarks. See, e.g., MSN/The Messenger, Biden Celebrates One Year of Inflation Reduction Act, but Stresses There’s ‘More Work to Do’ on the Economy.

In the major media, the “story” is whether the Inflation Reduction Act is “working” by delivering on the promises made when it was passed. Major media outlets are skeptical. See Washington Post, One year in, climate law tests Biden’s environmental justice pledge, and NYTimes, For Biden, Celebrating What a Law Did Rather Than What It Did Not.  (Both articles should be accessible to all.)

          The disparity in coverage is unfair. Biden is celebrating one of the most significant environmental bills ever passed by Congress, and the media treats it as an afterthought or a punching bag. Trump is dealing with his fourth indictment based on facts that have been in the public domain since January 2021 and the media can talk of nothing else. Oh, well! In this instance, “No news is good news.” If a candidate for president could pick which side of the news cycle to be on, “Not getting sufficient credit for legislative achievements” is preferable to “Defending his fourth indictment.”

          The Georgia indictment continues to dominate the news—as does a false news narrative that Americans are evenly split in their support for Trump despite four indictments. The persistence of that false meme is illustrated by the headline published by the Associated Press after it conducted a poll with the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research regarding attitudes toward Trump in light of his indictment. As the AP News headline tells it, “Donald Trump's actions has divided Americans along party lines, AP-NORC poll says.”

          The AP headline is misleading. While it is true that Americans are “divided” in a literal sense, it is more accurate to say that “A strong majority of Americans oppose Trump because of J6 and Georgia election interference,” which is what the AP/NORC polling data shows. You can check out the AP data for yourself, or read this analysis in Slate, Donald Trump: Americans are really not that "divided" about the former president's conduct in 2020.

          The Slate article takes a close look at the AP/NORC data to show that Americans are not evenly “divided” about Trump's criminality—even within the GOP. As explained by Slate, the AP/NORC poll gave respondents various gradations for opposing or supporting Trump. The AP headline focuses on only one of the five choices in the poll for its headline. But if you group the responses as “support, oppose, or don’t know,” Americans strongly disapprove of Trump's actions on J6 and in Georgia. Per Slate,

If you boil things down to “what he did was bad” or “what he did was OK,” Trump is a loser by margins of 64–21 and 64–15.

          Trump is in trouble even among Republicans:

A combined 42 percent of Republicans told the AP that Trump’s conduct in Georgia was illegal or unethical, while only 31 percent said he’d done nothing wrong. Regarding January 6th, 38 percent of Republicans said Trump behaved illegally or unethically, with 46 percent coming down on the side of “nothing wrong.”

          The Hill engaged in the same type of “accurate but misleading” cherry-picking from the AP/NORC poll with its headline, 53 percent in new poll say they would not support Trump if he is GOP nominee. Again, that statement is literally true, but the more relevant fact is that 64% of respondents say they “definitely” or “probably” would not support Trump, while only 36% of respondents say that they “definitely” or “probably” would support Trump for president in 2024.

          In citing the AP/NORC poll, I am not making the point that 64% of voters say they would not support Trump. (It is too early for polls to be meaningful predictors of election outcomes.) Instead, I am making the point that the media seems intent on understating opposition to Trump based on the indictments and overstating the notion of an evenly divided electorate that does not care about the indictments. They do.

          As always, we must not conflate the indictments and the election. Beating Trump at the ballot box is the only path forward. But Americans are paying attention to Trump's increasing legal jeopardy. Don’t let headline writers tell you differently.

 [Robert B. Hubbell]

[follow-up-news]

During the summer, Levena Lindahl closes off entire rooms, covers windows with blackout curtains and budgets to manage the monthly cost of electricity for air conditioning. But even then, the heat finds its way in. “Going upstairs, it’s like walking into soup. It is so hot,” Lindahl said. “If I walk past my attic upstairs, you can feel the heat radiating through a closed door.” Lindahl, 37, who lives in North Carolina, said her monthly electricity bills in the summer used to be around $100 years ago, but they’ve since doubled. She blames a gradual warming trend caused by climate change. Around 7 in 10 Americans say in the last year extreme heat has had an impact on their electricity bills, ranging from minor to major, and most have seen at least a minor impact on their outdoor activities, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. As tens of millions of Americans swelter through another summer of historic heat waves, the survey’s findings reveal how extreme heat is changing people’s lives in big and small ways. The poll found that about 7 in 10 Americans have been personally affected by extremely hot weather or extreme heat waves over the past five years. That makes extreme heat a more common experience than other weather events or natural disasters like wildfires, major droughts and hurricanes, which up to one-third of U.S. adults said they’ve been personally affected by.