Don't Overhype Voters' Deficit Fears

A national exit poll has the media claiming that 39% of voters believe tackling the deficit is a top priority. But a closer look shows this isn't the case.

A spate of recent exit polls are claiming that voters believe tackling the deficit is a top priority. But blogger Ben Somberg took a closer look at the polls and suggests that this might not be the case.

Somberg notes:

the official exit poll found that the deficit is a bigger priority than jobs or the economy generally. Sure enough, it's nonsense. ... in fact a wave of polls just days earlier showed the usual -- that deficits aren't a top public priority.

How is Somberg so sure?  He explains:

The polling has bopped around a bit here or there over the last year, but no matter how the pollsters ask the question -- and no matter how much deficit hyping there is in the press -- people rank the economy and jobs as higher concerns than the deficit. There was actually a new wave of polling on this just before the election, in fact, asking people for their top priorities:

*USA Today / Gallup: "passing new stimulus bill" (38%), "cutting federal spending" (24%), "repealing health care law" (23%), "extending all income tax cuts (8%)

*Reuters / Ipsos: 72% say jobs are "crucial" focus, 25% say they are "important"; 57% say the budget deficit is "crucial" focus, 38% say "important"

*CNN / Opinion Research: "economy" (58%), "the federal budget deficit" (8%), "education" (8%), "health care" (8%), the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (8%), "illegal immigration" (8%) -- and other topics get smaller amounts

*Pew: "the job situation" (39%), "health care" (25%), "the deficit" (17%), and it drops off to 6% and below after that

But now in the past day and a half there's been some attention to a stunning outlier on the question, from the national exit polling data from Tuesday. The exit poll seems to say that 39% see the deficit as the top priority for the new Congress, while only 37% said spending to create jobs is most important.

It's gotten some attention. See, for example: Liz Sidoti of AP, Jackie Calmes and Megan Thee-Brenan of the NYT, Kyle Dropp of the Washington Post, Gerald Seid of WSJ, Elizabeth Williamson of the WSJ, ABCNews.com, Jill Lawrence of Politics Daily, Judy Woodruff on the PBS Newshour and John Dickerson of Slate.

But what did the exit poll actually ask? I mean, did public opinion on the importance of deficit vs. jobs and the economy really make a huge, historic shift in a matter of days?

The national exit polling asked two 'priorities' questions.

"Most Important Issue Facing Country Today" got: Economy (62%) Health Care (18%) War in Afghanistan (8%) Illegal Immigration (8%) It appears those were the only options, which makes it not very useful.

Then there was the "Highest Priority for Next Congress" question, which got: Reducing Deficit (39%) Spending to Create Jobs (37%) Cutting Taxes (19%) This time, only three choices!

It seems the "Jobs" option was saddled with "spending to create." Yet "Reducing Deficit" was not saddled with "by increasing taxes to raise money" or "by cutting spending on government programs."

I see I'm not the first to note the questionable setup of this question. The WSJ's David Wessel explains: "One inelegantly phrased exit poll Tuesday found 45% favored tax cuts or spending increases to help the economy while 39% made reducing the deficit a higher priority (which, except to some economic alchemists, means tax increases and spending cuts.)"

Also, Ed Kilgore at TNR notes the "rather limited choice" presented in the question and Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic seems to be tweaking the setup a bit as well.

In sum, it's rather doubtful that a massive shift -- in under a week-- of public opinion occurred on the importance of the deficit. But that's what any news organization that hyped the national exit poll's 39% figure implicitly conveys.

These news organization should go back and look at the wording of the questions, do some hard thinking about how appropriate the setup was, and tell their audiences about the findings of the four polls in the week before the election that weren't saddled with a non-nonsensical option list.