NYT Op-Ed: Don’t Be So Quick to Believe Single-Issue Polls on Topics Like Gun Control

Gun control advocates will, from time to time, point to polls that they claim show very broad support for various anti-Second Amendment measures. Sometimes, they’ll show some that they claim illustrate that the support is strong even among gun owners.

Of course, sometimes, those polls are constructed in a very poor manner, counting on many people not to understand the issue in any depth and just ask a passing question that can be easily misinterpreted. It’s slimy, but it happens.

However, an op-ed at the New York Times argues that, particularly with single-issue polls on topics like gun control, there are other reasons to ignore them entirely.

Supporters of gun control measures often say their ideas are common sense, suggesting that nearly every American supports them. If you spend five minutes discussing the topic with people at Everytown, Giffords or any other gun control group, they will inevitably point out that polls show as many as 90 percent of Americans support universal background checks, a policy that would require everyone to pass a check to obtain a firearm.

Do they, really?

You can certainly find surveys, including from reputable pollsters, in which 80 percent or 90 percent of respondents say they support universal background checks. But when the idea has gone to a vote, it has performed worse than the polls suggest. In Nevada, a 2016 ballot measure to strengthen background checks got a little more than 50 percent support — barely enough to pass. In Maine, another measure that year lost with 48 percent of the vote. Hillary Clinton carried both of those states in the 2016 election. I would love to believe that nearly every American supports stricter gun laws. It doesn’t seem to be true.

It’s not just guns. Policy proposals very often overperform in issue polls, according to a recent study that looked at available polling and ballot measure data across 11 topics from 1958 to 2020. The findings apply to both liberal and conservative causes. The more popular a policy is in polls, data showed, the more likely it is to underperform on Election Day.

Now, that’s just interesting, and while it appears the author actually favors gun control, it’s also clear that he knows the single-issue gun control polls are pretty much nonsense.

I’ve brought up the disparity in universal background check ballot initiatives before. There was supposedly massive support for these measures, and they’ve been trounced plenty of times when the public got to vote on them.

So what gives?

Well, oddly, part of it might well be something I’ve touched on already in this piece, among a few others.

Pollsters’ questions rarely match ballot measures’ language, and even small wording changes can have big effects. Similarly, voters might be enticed by an idea that’s cleanly framed by a pollster but grow skeptical once they see how it would work in reality. Lastly, the people taking the surveys may not give much thought to their answers or have an acquiescence bias — a tendency to say yes.

Put another way, issue polling measures public opinion “before it gets pulled into the political tornado,” said Jocelyn Kiley, a director of research at Pew Research Center. People might at first like the idea of requiring a background check for every gun purchase. But what happens when they find out their favorite politician opposes the policy? Or that the requirement might apply not just to transactions at stores and gun shows but also between a father and his son? Or that alternative ideas could combat gun violence without changing so much so quickly?

They also generally fail to consider just how much someone cares about a given position.

For example, they might favor universal background checks in that moment, but do they care enough to actually show up to the polls to vote for it should it appear on a ballot? Will that support be enough to change who they’ll vote for in the next election?

When it’s, at best, a passing level of support that barely even registers, it’s not likely to translate into voting action very often.

And yes, asking a question before anyone knows anything at all about the topic isn’t going to translate into the same level of support once they find out the facts surrounding the issue. Universal background checks aren’t going to be nearly as popular when people find out that they’re universal and not the status quo, but even if the individual polled got that, they might have an issue with having to go through a background check to sell a gun to their brother.

Things shift and change, and those numbers don’t translate often to actual political support.

Yet will this stop Giffords, Brady, Everytown, and others to try and use single-issue polls to push their agenda? Absolutely not. They don’t actually care to hear that maybe they’re not as popular as they want to believe. They’ll keep pushing it and pretending that they’re the ones who are on the supposed “right side of history,” even though those who try to take rights away never actually are on the right side of anything.

But now you know, and you can share the word whenever they try.

Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.

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