Partisan Interest, Reactions to IRS and AP Controversies

People-Press: Attentive Public Critical of DOJ Use of AP Records

So far, public interest in a trio of controversies connected to the Obama administration has been limited. Roughly a quarter (26%) of Americans say they are very closely following reports that the IRS targeted conservative groups. About the same number (25%) are tracking the Benghazi investigation very closely, and even fewer (16%) are very closely following news about the Justice Department subpoenaing phone records of AP journalists.

The new survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted May 16-19 among 1,002 adults, finds that 37% of Republicans are paying very close attention to the IRS story, compared with 21% of Democrats and 25% of independents. And the Benghazi investigation continues to draw much greater interest from Republicans (34% very closely) than Democrats (18%).

A historical review of previous controversies involving White House or cabinet officials finds that these levels of public interest – and the partisan divide in attentiveness – are not necessarily new. Previous scandals – such as the Lewis “Scooter” Libby case during George W. Bush’s administration or the “Pardon-gate” scandal at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term – received similar levels of public attention, and were generally more interesting to those in the opposition party.

The IRS Targeting Controversy

Overall, 42% say the Obama administration was involved in the decision to target conservative groups. Fewer (31%) say that the decision to target conservative groups was made by IRS employees without administration involvement, while 27% offer no opinion.

Not surprisingly, opinions about this are highly partisan. Nearly seven-in-ten Republicans (69%) say the administration was involved in the IRS’s decision to target conservative groups, compared with just 12% who say the decision was made by IRS employees. By contrast, just 21% of Democrats say the administration was involved, while 54% say IRS employees made the decision to target conservative groups. By a 44% to 28% margin, more independents say the administration was involved in the IRS decision than say it was not.

Those who followed the IRS story at least fairly closely (50% of the public) express similar views about the administration’s involvement: 49% say the administration was involved while 35% say it was not. But partisan differences are wider among this attentive segment of the population; fully 78% of Republicans who have followed the story believe the administration was involved in the decision to target conservative groups, while 63% of attentive Democrats say the decision came from IRS employees.

AP Phone Records Controversy

The public is of two minds when it comes to the Justice Department’s decision to subpoena the phone records of AP journalists as part of an investigation into the disclosure of classified information. Slightly more disapprove (44%) than approve (36%) of the DOJ’s actions.

Criticism of the DOJ is substantially higher among those who are paying attention to the story. By a 55% to 35% margin people who have followed reports about the AP phone records at least fairly closely disapprove of the DOJ’s actions. Attentive Republicans are particularly critical: they disapprove by a 66% to 28% margin.

Past Administration Controversies

The Pew Research Center has been tracking public interest in news stories for more than two decades, and while each political scandal is unique – and the list is hardly comprehensive – the level of public and partisan interest in the current affairs is largely consistent with prior events.

At their peaks, about a quarter of Americans very closely followed controversies involving Alberto Gonzales (22%), Scooter Libby (27%) and Karl Rove (23%) during George W. Bush’s administration. All three drew more attention from Democrats than Republicans.

The “Pardon-gate” controversy at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency was followed very closely by 28%, with far more interest from Republicans (42%) than Democrats (24%).

The exception to this partisan gap was the public’s first reaction to the Monica Lewinsky story. An early February 1998 survey found 35% following very closely, with high levels of interest across party lines. However, the partisan gap in interest in allegations against Clinton increased during impeachment proceedings later that year.

The analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted May 16-19, 2013, among a national sample of 1,002 adults 18 years of age or older living in the continental United States (500 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 502 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 249 who had no landline telephone). The survey was conducted by interviewers at Princeton Data Source and Universal Survey under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both samples were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in English. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home. Interviews in the cell sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone, if that person was an adult 18 years of age or older. For detailed information about our survey methodology, see: https://people-press.org/methodology/.

The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and region to parameters from the 2011 Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and population density to parameters from the Decennial Census. The sample also is weighted to match current patterns of telephone status, based on extrapolations from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey. The weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with both landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being included in the combined sample and adjusts for household size among respondents with a landline phone. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting. The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:

Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request.

In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.