The Daily - Why Polling on Gun Control Gets It Wrong

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

In calling for Republicans to pass gun safety measures like expanded background checks, Democrats point to polls that show most Americans support the idea. They aren’t wrong about the polling. In fact, some polls show that over 90 percent of Americans support expanded checks. Polling, however, does not tell the whole story. Guest: Nate Cohn, a domestic correspondent for The Upshot at The New York Times.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Broad public support for gun control may not be as broad as polling shows or as Democrats hope. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily. Today. Enough. We should expand background checks to keep guns out of the hands of felons, fugitives, and those under restraining orders. In calling for Republicans to pass gun safety measures like expanded background checks, Democrats point to polling that shows that most Americans support the idea. Stronger background checks are something that the vast majority of Americans, including the majority of gun owners, agree on.

But as my colleague Nate Cohn has found, the polling does not tell the whole story. It's Tuesday, June 7th. So, Nate, right now there's a bill in Congress that would expand background checks. And Democrats are struggling to get the votes for it. And one of the things that they're saying is, look at the polling. The vast majority of Americans are actually in favor of this. It's popular. So why won't you vote for it? So I guess my first question for you, Nate, is are the Democrats right?

Do most Americans want background checks? Maybe. They are right about the polling. In the public polls, voters overwhelmingly say that they support expanded universal background checks. Some polls show that over 90 percent of Americans support expanded background checks. So they're not making it up. The polls do show a tremendous amount of public support for a lot of the measures that they're proposing. measures that they're proposing. But it's a little more complicated than that, because although it's true that voters overwhelmingly say they support background checks and polling, their votes are a little bit different. When states have put gun control policies up to a vote in referendums and initiatives, the public has returned less than unanimous support. In fact, the support has been about as divided as a presidential election. Okay, so the polls are overwhelmingly in support, but when it actually comes to voting on

it, that's when a difference pops up. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, the public support for background checks has been much more equivocal when voters have the opportunity to enact expanded background checks into law. And I think the best examples come in 2016, when there were three referendums put up to vote in California, Maine, and Nevada, three states that voted for Hillary Clinton in the general election, that proposed in different ways expanded background checks on guns or on ammunition purchases. And those initiatives, you would think, might have received overwhelming support based on national surveys, but in the end, they basically fared about as well as Hillary Clinton did.

And overall, the initiatives fared a little worse than she did. So there wasn't unanimous support at all. It was a deeply divided election that closely resembled the typical issue in national politics, not a matter of broad national consensus. resembled the typical issue in national politics, not a matter of broad national consensus. Okay, so the expectation was that these background check bills would do really well, but actually they didn't. Right. In Maine, the background check bill actually lost. It was defeated at the polls,

even in the state where Hillary Clinton won narrowly. In Nevada, it barely squeaked by. It was like a one-point race. That's also a battleground state. Hillary Clinton won it by a couple of points. In California, it won by a more comfortable margin. We got more than 60% of the vote, but so did Hillary Clinton. So it did about as well as you would expect for a partisan political issue. If nationwide background checks really have 80% or 90% support, then California you might think could be like 95% support or something, right? And there it is polling, again, like a typical Democrat Republican issue. So, Nate, I guess on background check referendums, then far fewer voters say they wanted these rules than actually told pollsters. So there's a huge difference between

the share of people voting for the thing and the share of people saying they liked it in the poll. So I guess then that says to me that it's really just not as simple as the Democrats are making it seem. Yeah, it's certainly more complicated. And it complicates a lot of the Democratic argument about how our government responds to gun violence. how our government responds to gun violence. The Democratic contention is that, well, if the public overwhelmingly supports background checks and increased gun control measures, then there must be a host of other explanations

that help make sense of why legislation is consistently blocked in Washington and why Republicans choose to oppose these background checks anyway. And, you know, there's the idea that the NRA and the gun lobby play a huge role in influencing senators in the back room, or's the composition of the senate which is tilted overwhelmingly toward more rural states or that there are single issue voters that are getting in the way of the

broader electorate support for background checks i mean all those theories may have some degree of merit or another but you know if the electorate in several blue states basically returns a result that looks like a typical democrat versus Republican election, it raises the possibility that the public is just simply more divided on this issue than the polls have made it seem. Okay, so Nate, explain why it would be that the polls differ so much from the referendums. What's going on there? Well, there are a lot of reasons. I mean, there sort of has to be to cover such a huge gap between these results in the national polls, right? The first one is just that the polls could overstate the support for background checks.

One of the most likely reasons is a phenomenon called acquiescence bias. Uh-oh, what's that? I know, I know. But it's just the tendency for people to sort of say yes to things. I mean, if you've ever nodded along with someone... Like I'm doing right now. Like you're doing right now just to go along with it, or you've gone along with someone's idea for dinner

and you were sort of agnostic about the restaurant. I mean, those are all just real world examples of acquiescence bias. And it plays out in polling too. If there's an idea that just sort of sounds good, that's easy to go along with, something as reasonable sounding as a background check, I don't think it should be too surprising that there are a bunch of people who maybe if they thought about it a little harder

could come down against it, who start out saying in a survey that they're for it. And another reason is that people sometimes just don't entirely understand the question. I mean, imagine that you're taking a political poll on your phone and you're walking around the room and you're distracted a little bit, you're paying half attention, and the pollster asks you whether you support an expanded universal background check program. And you heard background checks, and you know you like the idea of background checks. But have you really determined that what we're really asking about here is a brand new expanded federal background check program that's distinct from the one that already exists? Maybe not.

There could be people that want to indicate their general support for a background check program but don't necessarily support some new initiative beyond what's already been enacted into law. Got it. You know, a third thing is that the polls could miss an important dimension of public opinion, and that's a status quo bias, a lowercase C conservative tendency to defer to the status quo and keep things the way they are when the stakes are high. A poll is really carefree. It is easy to say you support Medicare for all. It's easy to say that you support a $5 trillion Green New Deal. But when that is actually about to become a reality and all of the real world consequences and responsibility come with it, voters could choose to be a lot more cautious about enacting those same policies into law or supporting candidates who would really do those things than they would be about just simply indicating a general support for the idea in a poll when

there are no stakes. Right. But this seems to be discrepancies and problems with polling that apply to everything, right? Where do guns specifically fit into this? So I think you're right that everything I've said so far could be said to apply for almost every issue. And clearly what we see on these gun control referendums is an order of magnitude bigger than the typical issue, right? 90% support, just almost entirely evaporating in Republican areas. That says that there's something more going on here. And I think that the more that's going on is that about half the public has this deep connection to gun rights and supports gun rights, and that a political campaign can activate that support and quickly flip voters who initially say they support background checks to oppose background checks

by drawing on their deeper sympathy for gun rights. And so I think that that can play out in several different ways. One is that there can just be a broad campaign. You can imagine there's political advertisement ahead of the election where the NRA says that this background check initiative is going to take away your guns and part of taking away your gun rights. And it's a threat to the second amendment. And then suddenly all of these Republicans who were initially fine with the idea may see it as part of some larger threat and then come to oppose the initiative. And that wouldn't prove the polls were wrong, strictly speaking. People changed their mind. Their view might have been genuine in the first place, but the voters came to see what seemed at first to be a narrow background check initiative as part of a broader campaign to restrict gun rights, which they care more about.

Got it. And we know from other polls that nearly half of Americans are strong supporters of gun rights and don't really support increased gun restrictions and so on. So it makes sense that if a campaign can tap into those feelings, that they could very quickly polarize a political debate on this issue. Another way it can play out is, you know, that there could be voters who support initiatives in the abstract, but don't necessarily support a

specific proposal. They might find, you know, the expression that the devils are in the details. They might find that the specifics of the initiative are not exactly to their liking. Transferring guns between friends is an example of something that came up in Maine. transferring guns between friends is an example of something that came up in maine you might say you support universal background checks in a poll but maybe you reconsider when you find out that means you can't give a gun to your friend before a hunting trip without having to take it to a third party for a background check that suddenly seems like an inconvenience that you wouldn't be able to go along with yeah and it's worth stepping back to consider how all of these different factors deference the status quo you know a campaign about gun rights, and then a focus on the support for gun rights, all of these little

issues, the details that might, you know, lead them to believe there's a bigger threat to gun rights than they thought when they heard about this idea in the abstract, and then a campaign that's reinforcing it, that all, I think, naturally coalesces into a very easy choice for them to say no and defer cautiously to keeping the status quo as it is. So despite the fact that voters might be inclined to support some form of gun control, they can also be open to campaigns that appeal to gun rights, right? Because a number of those voters support gun rights. I mean, a lot of them are gun owners. So when someone like the NRA says background checks are a slippery slope and a fundamental challenge to gun rights, those same people will vote no on the referendum. That's certainly how it's played out to this point.

Okay, so Nate, that sounds like that's the answer, right? That there's a really good reason why Republicans aren't voting for this background check bill. The data shows they shouldn't. People don't actually want it in those huge numbers that the polls suggest. So it makes sense that members of Congress would be afraid that if they did vote for the background check bill, they'd be voted out of office. Well, not exactly. background check bill, they'd be voted out of office. Well, not exactly. I mean, they may be right to think that their districts oppose new background check or gun control legislation, but they may not be right that they would suffer a severe political

cost if they did support background checks themselves. We'll be right back. So, Nate, we established that polling really overestimates how supportive the public is on an issue like background checks. But you also just said that that doesn't necessarily mean that Republicans should be afraid of losing their seat if they try to support it. So explain that. someone has a view about an issue, like say they oppose background checks, and whether they feel so strongly about an issue that they are likelier to vote against a candidate because that candidate disagrees with them on that issue. We sometimes refer to a group of people called single issue voters to describe a group of voter who feel so strongly about something like guns or abortion that it's essentially the only issue in the campaign for them once it becomes live in the race. Right. So in this case, a single issue voter might be someone who supports gun rights and maybe

is open to voting for Democrats or Republicans, but there's no chance that they would vote for a candidate who supported background checks. for a candidate who supported background checks. And the truth is that it is not easy to measure the share of the electorate that might count as a single-issue voter on guns. It's a difficult question to study, and it would be even harder to arrive at those sort of figures for every congressional district in the country. And why is it so difficult to measure?

Well, for one thing, it suffers from some of the same problems that we described at the beginning for issue polling, like acquiescence bias. It's very easy to tell a pollster, oh, there's no way I'm ever going to support someone who disagrees with me on X, Y, and Z issues. But it's harder to know whether that's actually true in practice. And there's a long history of voters telling pollsters, say, that they could never vote for someone who disagrees with them on abortion, but then they come around and they support, say, a candidate from their own party who has the opposite view of them on abortion. Now, that may be because those voters don't know that that candidate has a different view on them on abortion. It may be because both candidates in the race in that instance may oppose the voters' view on abortion, or it may be that they are just

overstating it because it's much easier to tell a pollster that you're going to do something than to actually do it. Okay, so because this is such a hard thing to measure, if you're a Republican senator right now and you're looking at the data, you're looking at the polling, plus all the real votes on this issue, you don't actually know whether people would vote you out of office if you supported the background check bill in Congress right now. So then why does it feel like politicians are still making the calculation not to stick their necks out at this issue, like not to support the bill? Well, some might be genuinely opposed to gun control initiatives, but even stipulating that they are open to background checks or other gun control laws, except for their concerns about

the political fallout. I mean, I think it's fair to say that they're not wrong to be worried about a backlash if they cross their party's base on this issue. It may not be very clear in the data, but I mean, we can use our common sense here. You know, in today's polarized partisan environment, going against your party's base is all but certain to provoke a major political backlash. I don't know whether it's enough for them to lose a primary election, but it could be enough to court a primary challenge. And even if not that, it's enough to make many of your usual allies upset and angry with you. Republicans don't run for office

because they want to fight with conservatives. If you were to reverse it and you imagine what a moderate Democrat might feel if they were to come out on the pro-life side or anti-Roe versus Wade side of things right now, just imagine what their lives would be like in terms of all of the people who they usually count as their allies being really upset at them. And, you know, so it doesn't surprise me. You're going against your team, right? Your friends are going to stop talking to you.

That's right. And even if it's not as bad as I just described, I mean, for most of these members of Congress, their jobs are easy. They don't have serious general election campaigns. Oftentimes, they don't usually have strong primary challenges, at least if they go along with their party's base on, you know, hot button issues like this one. And so you're talking about the difference between them having a nice, comfortable time in Washington and having a lot of deeply unpleasant interactions with people who usually count as your friends and allies. I think we have a really telling recent example in the case of Chris Jacobs, a congressman from upstate New York near Buffalo, who after the mass shooting there came out in support of a federal assault weapons ban. And there was an intense backlash against him from local Republican Party leaders and activists. And he decided in just one week that he wasn't even going to run for re-election. His polling said that he could have run for re-election,

but it just wasn't worth it. This isn't what he signed up for. He doesn't want to have some big fight with his allies and fellow conservatives over this issue. And it was easier for him to step out of the ring. That's a pretty dramatic conclusion that there was just no hope at all. So he just quit. Yeah. One thing I'll say is, you know, we as, you know, non-politicians, we often from the outside want them to fight. And there are all sorts of issues where politicians are very happy to fight.

They wanna fight for things that they care really deeply about, that align with their party's base, where they fight against their normal adversaries and the people that they dislike. But in this case, you're asking a Republican not to fight against the people that they don't like with their usual allies, but to fight against the people who usually count as their friends. And I think that when you see just how quickly that they decide to peel away in that sort of setting, it gives you some sense of how unpleasant that is for them, even if they could win in the end.

So that's an example of a politician reading the tea leaves, anticipating probably that he might be voted out because he bucked the party line, and dropping out. But are there examples of Republicans supporting gun control measures and not getting voted out? I mean, are there counterexamples? I mean, I think the easiest counterexample is to look at Pat Toomey. examples? I mean, I think the easiest counter example is to look at Pat Toomey. You may recall that after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in late 2012, there was this bipartisan bill to create background checks. And it was sponsored most notably by Joe Manchin, but also by Senate Republican Pat Toomey. It was the Manchin-Toomey bill. And that bill did not overcome a Senate filibuster, but it did earn

the support of several Senate Republicans. And none of those Senate Republicans appeared to face a serious primary challenge because of their support for that bill. Pat Toomey, in fact, didn't even face a primary challenge at all in 2016. His Republican primary was uncontested. So clearly, it's at least possible to support this kind of law and avoid any serious political cost for it. Now I can think of some arguments for why Pat Toomey being from Pennsylvania meant he was a little less likely to face a backlash than maybe if he was the senator from Wyoming or something. But nonetheless, the absence of any obvious primary challenge there suggests that it's by no means inevitable that backing these laws will result in a political disaster for a Republican. So, Nate, what does that tell you? And what should Republican senators take away from that? I think that my simple answer is that this is really hard to predict. You look at what happened to Chris Jacobs, and he obviously faced an immediate and widespread backlash for coming out in support of federal assault weapons ban.

Pat Toomey, on the other hand, did not face that kind of a backlash. Clearly, there's some risk there, but it's not inevitable either. I do think that coming out in support of background checks is a lot less risky for Republicans than coming out in favor of an assault gun ban. After all, those polls do show 90% support for background checks where we began this episode. And while many of those people may not support it terribly strongly, like the fact that they're willing to say that they support it when they first hear about it, to me that betrays that maybe the political costs of coming out in support of that are probably not that grave for a Republican like Pat Toomey. Right. I mean, even if they wouldn't vote for it on a referendum. Yeah. Even if it's not something they like enough to support, it can't be that poisonous and toxic to support if most Republicans, when they first hear the idea,

say they'll support it. Now, that might be a little bit different in this context with Democrats pushing the bill, which I think will automatically polarize it to some extent compared to in a poll question where it's just sort of presented as this abstract idea from nowhere. I would guess that if we had a poll about, do you support the bill backed by House Democrats and Joe Biden to enact new restrictions on guns, that that would fare pretty poorly among Republicans, or at least quite a bit worse. Because it's associated with the other team. Exactly. But I think that in the scheme of issues that those initial numbers on the strong public

support for background checks suggests to me that there are a huge number of Republican-leaning voters who will not automatically dismiss them because they heard that they supported a background check law. So it sounds like what you're saying is there are voters who would vote against this on a referendum, but who would not necessarily punish their member of Congress, with whom they agree on most other things, right, for supporting background checks. So I guess the question is, are there enough Republicans in Congress who are willing to take that risk and count on those voters not to punish them? Well, my guess is no, though I suppose we'll find out soon enough. I mean, for most of these members, there are two big competing factors that shape this political moment.

On the one hand, there's this wave of horrific violence, which has led some number of Republican-leaning voters to say, maybe we do need to do something about mass shootings and gun violence in the country. And that, I think, has created, if not an easy path for Republicans to support new gun legislation, has at least cracked the door open enough that maybe you at least want to wonder about what they would do in a way that two months ago wouldn't even be worth asking whether any Republican congressman or senators would back new gun laws. On the other hand, though, this has become a hot button polarized issue at a moment when the country is deeply polarized. It's Joe Biden who's pushing it. Democrats are

totally united on it. And that tends to cut the other way. For many people who might otherwise be on the fence, that political context can turn guns into, you know, just another blue versus red issue where people are going to want to rally around their team and deny a victory to the other side. I don't know exactly how that will shake out for any individual member, but I will say that at this moment in our country's history, and with Joe Biden being as unpopular among Republicans as he is, and the Democrats being as unpopular among Republicans as they are, that it will always be a heavy lift to convince Republicans to join alongside Democrats on any of these culturally salient issues like guns. Right. So in a way, while it seems like precisely the moment for Democrats to be asking Republicans

to vote for gun control, I mean, you know, we just saw 19 schoolchildren shot to death in Uvalde, Texas. For some, it might be precisely not the moment to do that because everybody's watching, right? And we are living in a world in which it's very difficult to go against your own team in favor of what the other team is doing. And so the consequences of going against your own team would be severe. Yeah, if you could create a political moment where Republicans wouldn't feel like they were having to support the Democrats or cave to a long-held Democratic view, but still have all this attention on the issue, maybe that could create the conditions for a compromise or for more bipartisan movement. But that's really hard to bring about. It's really

hard to bring all of that attention to an issue without it plugging in to partisan politics as usual. Yeah. And the lights on this issue are so bright right now. About as bright as it gets. Nate, thank you. No, thank you. On Monday, Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said that a bipartisan group of senators is getting closer to an agreement on gun legislation that could include proposals on mental health, school safety, and background checks. The lead Republican senator at the negotiating table, John Cornyn from Texas, has not committed to anything, but said that, quote, hope springs eternal.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament. The vote fell short of what was needed to oust Johnson as Tory party leader. But it showed just how much support for him had dropped since last year, when reports emerged that he and his aides threw parties that violated the government's COVID lockdown rules. Johnson argued that the vote should end months of speculation about his future. But history shows that conservative prime ministers who've been subjected to such a

vote, even if they win, are usually pushed out of office within a few months. even if they win, are usually pushed out of office within a few months. And five members of the far-right group the Proud Boys were indicted for seditious conspiracy in connection with the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The men are accused of using force to try to overthrow the government. It is the most serious charge in the Justice Department's case. the government. It is the most serious charge in the Justice Department's case. The Proud Boys' former leader, Enrique Tarrio, was not in Washington on the day of the assault, but prosecutors said he, quote, led the advance planning and remained in contact with other members of the group during the storming of the building.

Today's episode was produced by Sydney Harper, Stella Tan, and Will Reed. It was edited by Paige Cowett, contains original music by Alicia Baitu, Marion Lozano, and Rowan Nemesto, and was engineered by Corey Schruppel. Our theme music is by Jim Bumberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.