Polls can be a valuable tool for determining public opinion, but in the hands of special interests, they can also be manipulated to create a false appearance of public support for their issue. On November 7, Public Campaign Action Fund and Democracy Corps released a poll on Americans’ attitudes towards money in politics and taxpayer-funded campaigns. You can probably guess which kind of poll it was.
The poll’s press release proclaims that voters “strongly support serious and bold reforms” and that money in politics is a bipartisan issue that unites voters. It goes on to say that further restrictions on political speech and support for taxpayer-funded campaigns are major opportunities for both parties to attract new voters.
The pollsters are so confident in their results that they claim “there is no downside for either party to grab onto this issue and make it central to their campaigns.” Cue the alarm bells; this is a major tip off that the poll is trying to sell us something rather than tell us something. Every action has both costs and benefits, and people who try to deny that costs exist are probably selling snake oil.
Additionally, on November 5 Seattle voters rejected a ballot measure to implement taxpayer-funded campaigns, with 54% voting no. This result contrasts starkly with the claims of wide and deep public support for this style of reform, so let’s take a closer look at PCAF’s poll.
Getting into the actual text of the poll, we find that the press release’s bold conclusions are based primarily off of a majority of respondents from both parties in swing districts identifying support for a hypothetical public financing system. More on that in a minute, but before respondents even heard about the hypothetical program, they were read a bizarre paragraph about the government shutdown and partisan politics. See for yourself:
“After this political nightmare and gridlock, a group of bi-partisan members announced what we need to do is reduce the power of special interest money that is creating this partisan and extreme agenda and crowding out the voices of the average voter. They say the most important thing is to make reforms and change businesses (sic) as usual in Washington. Now let me read you a proposal that some people have suggested to reform the campaign finance system.”
Welcome to Poisoning the Well 101. If respondents didn’t think there was a problem with campaign finance when they picked up the phone, they will now. This biased and subjective “context” is clearly designed to gin up support for the pollster’s reform proposal. It’s no wonder people say they support “reform” when they’re first told the status quo is a “nightmare” with “special interest money that is creating this partisan and extreme agenda and crowding out the voices of the average voter.” That’s not polling, it’s preaching.
Furthermore, poll respondents get a purely one-sided description of the issue. They are told who supports the reform (“a group of bi-partisan members”) and why (“reduce the power of special interest money… make reforms and change businesses (sic) as usual in Washington”), but are told nothing about who might oppose it or why. This is not how issues are debated in real life (or how scientific polls are conducted), where people are exposed to arguments from different sides. Unless politicians can ensure that citizens are inundated with messages favoring taxpayer-funded campaigns immediately prior to voting, and are never presented with any criticism of taxpayer-funded campaigns whatsoever, they cannot interpret the results of the poll as evidence that supporting taxpayer-funded campaigns will gain them new voters.
Providing a biased background isn’t the only way to manipulate a poll. You can also play on people’s emotions. Consider the promise to “change businesses (sic) as usual in Washington.” That doesn’t tell us anything about how the proposal actually works, but it resonates with Americans’ common frustration with government (interestingly, the poll was conducted two days after the immensely unpopular government shutdown ended). Its’ purpose is to sway, not inform.
The wording of the proposal itself raises additional concerns about the validity of the poll’s findings. It reads:
“Candidates for Congress would raise a large number of small donations of up to $150, and once they qualify, they’ll be eligible to have those donations matched by six to one from a fund. Larger contributions wouldn’t be matched. Voters would receive a limited tax credit for donations and there would be strict enforcement of election laws.”
The proposal mentions many benefits – candidates raising money from small donors, small donors having increased influence through matching funds, a tax credit for donations, strict enforcement of the law – but mentions cost only once, to say that the 6-to-1 matching funds come from “a fund.” That’s about as useful as saying that they come from “money.”
Meaningful conclusions can’t be drawn from polls that fail to explain costs or offer alternatives. Imagine a poll asking if Americans like cake. A very high percentage of poll respondents would no doubt indicate that they do, in fact, like cake. But it would be wrong to look at that poll and say ‘Americans want to eat cake for every meal!’ because it didn’t ask what we might like more, or what the costs of eating cake are. Maybe we love cake, but we love pie more. Maybe we love cake, but we don’t want to get fat.
In the same vein, maybe we love small donors, but we don’t want to force everyone to fund politicians’ campaigns against their will. Maybe we love small donors, but we don’t want our tax dollars taken away from education, health, safety, and other public priorities. In Seattle’s case, the costs were made clear: campaigns would be funded through property tax dollars. As a result, voters rejected the program.
In addition to ignoring cost, it’s also highly questionable whether the listed benefits would actually materialize. CCP’s research (as well as scholarly research) has raised many doubts about the ability of taxpayer-funded campaigns to achieve their goals, and vague promises like “there would be strict enforcement of election laws” are hard to take seriously without explanations of how it will be accomplished. In fact, like promising to change “business as usual”, this looks more like emotional priming than providing information. Saying we want laws to be enforced is like saying we want speech to be heard or votes to be counted. Of course we do – that’s what they’re for! The important question is never if the law should be enforced, but how, and at what cost. Without giving that information, the poll could just as plausibly have told us that the law will eliminate bad weather or the common cold.
Serious polls don’t engage in such cheap tactics to get people nodding their heads and saying “yes, I agree with that.” This poll, however, is clearly not serious. It is riddled with errors and omissions, all of which increase the likelihood of overstating public support for taxpayer-funded campaigns (surprise, surprise). As a result, the poll fails to provide any meaningful information. Policymakers and concerned citizens should turn to actual research on the effects of taxpayer-funded campaigns to form their opinions, not ginned up polls from sloppy interest groups that harbor their own agenda.
