The Missing Link: Priorities, the Public, and Probing the Bush Administration

Today's Gallup poll on whether there should be a special investigation of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism efforts is a great example of how people can look at one set of numbers and come up with two (or more) interpretations. It's also a great example of a situation where polling doesn't provide a key insight needed to really understand what's going on.

The headline writers went in two different directions: USA Today, which sponsored the survey, says "Most want inquiry into anti-terror tactics," while Gallup itself says ""No Mandate for Criminal Probes of Bush Administration" and "Mixed Feelings Regarding Investigating Bush Administration."

If you look at the numbers, each of those headlines is accurate – but they leave one key question unanswered.

Gallup asked whether three different aspects of the Bush administration should be investigated: the possible use of torture on suspected terrorists, the use of wiretaps without a warrant, and whether the Justice Department was used for political purposes. You can see the specific numbers here, but in all three cases, about four in 10 said they favored criminal investigations. Between 25 percent and 30 percent favored a special commission, and between a quarter to a third said they favored neither approach.

So there's no majority behind any one approach on this issue, but if you add those who favor a criminal probe to those who support a commission, you end up with a majority who support some kind of inquiry.

What we don't know, however, is whether this is actually a priority for the public. Surveys often find majorities of the public believe a specific proposal is a good idea while at the same time ranking it actually fairly low on their list of priorities. It's also very common for surveys to show support for an idea without getting any sense of the intensity or complexity of the public's feelings. Lots of ideas sound good to the public, but you can't judge support without knowing if a particular proposal is a high priority, and whether people would sacrifice other goals to achieve it.

Right now, we can't tell from this data whether an investigation would be first, second or tenth on the public's list of priorities. Nobody's asked that question of the public, as far as we know. Generally speaking, however, there are scads of surveys that show the economy to be the first priority for the public by overwhelming margins. So while the public may like the idea of investigating allegations of misconduct during the Bush administration, we don't know whether they really want Congress to start this battle, or to focus on something else.