I was only five years on September 11th, 2001, so I don’t remember much. But I do remember the fear. Like most parents, mine tried to shield my siblings and me from the news in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. We heard about it at school the next day, when our classmates were talking about the scary foreign terrorists who wanted to kill all of us and our families. That was an obvious exaggeration; Al Qaeda was not targeting kindergartners in South Texas. But the footage of two giant skyscrapers collapsing is a lot to take in as a kid. (Indeed, as an adult it hurts in a different way.) Over 67% of Americans told Gallup interviewers that they had “cried, prayed, felt depressed ... or showed more affection to love ones” as a result of the attacks. When I visited New York around the 10th anniversary of the attacks and spoke to relatives who lived in Brookly during the attacks, I got the sense those national wounds were curt deeper than public opinion surveys could detect.
This fear was a powerful tool in convincing the masses to support military interventions in the Middle East. A poll conducted for the Washington Post in the last week of September 2001 found a thirty point increase in the share of people who said they “trust the government in Washington to do what is right”. In the same survey, ninety percent of adults supported going to war “against the groups or nations responsible”, including if foreign civilians got killed (71%) or if US troops suffered casualties (66%).
The attacks, as well as the broader national post-September mental disassociation in the media, also helped make many Americans complicit in the rolling back of their civil liberties. Eighty-eight percent of respondents in that Washington Post poll said they supported “Allowing court-ordered wiretaps and electronic surveillance to follow a [terrorism] suspect for up to a year, anywhere that person goes in the United States” and 75% were in favor of “Allowing investigators to tap into voicemail and e-mail messages with just a search warrant, rather than a court order”. Here are some related items:
As support for the war waned, and knowledge of the massive scope of national surveillance went mainstream, however, a growing sense of intrusion on one’s civil liberties took hold in the American psyche. Polling conducted by the Associated Press and National Opinion Research Center over the last decade finds an 11 percentage point increase in the share of Americans who say it is “never necessary to sacrifice rights and freedoms” to fight terrorism:
The cost of the war, not just in lives, but also in our sense of liberties, became greater and generated more backlash over time.
Here’s a closing question: Polling from CBS News and YouGov this week found that 51% of adults think that “terrorism from other Americans” poses a “major threat” to citizens. Comparatively, 45% said “terrorism from overseas” is a major risk. I wonder how support for rolling back liberties would have been different in 9/11 was perpetrated by a group of US citizens instead of foreign extremists. Given the state of our politics and tattered social fabric, that may become a more relevant question in the years to come.
Lots more goodies in the write-up of that CBS/YouGov poll here.
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Right, enough of the sad stuff and war commentary. A request for regular readers: please leave a comment below, or send an email directly to me, with some thoughts on what you want out of this newsletter. How are you liking the content you’ve received so far? Are you learning? Is the public opinion angle to the news insightful and new to you, something others don’t provide? Let me know what you’d like me to produce. I am amenable to requests and searching for the best way to give you all a return on your investment. As always, I’m grateful for the supporters who give me the ability to do what I love: amplifying the voice of the people in the national discourse, and parsing the polls to improve political and electoral journalism.
My best, and more to come in the free weekly email later,
I am interested in your setting the agenda for a few issues rather than responding to the many issues of the day. For instance, the 15% threshold rule in the 2020 presidential nominating process nearly killed the Democrats chances; what can opinion studies of voter preference fluidity tell us about an appropriate threshold to exclude nuisance candidates, given a push for increasing numbers of candidates?
Elliott, I'm curious about your thoughts on multi mode poll sampling. I often am working with pollsters and poll data and am trying to shift clients away from the mentality of "live caller surveys are the gold standard". Is there a benefit to having a sample that is sourced via 25% online, 25% live call, 25% IVR, 25% Text messages? Are there diminishing returns to using more modes?
I'm sure you've covered it before, so if there are links that would be useful I would appreciate that.
Since I started reading the free weekly newsletter and later subscribed to the blog, I gained a broader perspective on opinion polling. Using polling to help set the agenda and form policy is good democracy and not always for political expediency.
I always enjoy content on the health of democracy and democratic reform in the U.S.
How divided are we? President Joe said it's 25% of us against the rest of us. That's a lot of noise in the system from 25%, eh? What are the probabilities of the minority, assuming it is one, ruling the nation by voter suppression, gerrymandering, filibuster, Fox, violence, assault weapons, evil and stubborn courts and school textbook judges, defunding of public education, Covid-19? If what we need is national unity and purpose, what does it take to get a war on global warming?
I’m always a fan of the code that goes into plots, when available!
I am interested in your setting the agenda for a few issues rather than responding to the many issues of the day. For instance, the 15% threshold rule in the 2020 presidential nominating process nearly killed the Democrats chances; what can opinion studies of voter preference fluidity tell us about an appropriate threshold to exclude nuisance candidates, given a push for increasing numbers of candidates?
Elliott, I'm curious about your thoughts on multi mode poll sampling. I often am working with pollsters and poll data and am trying to shift clients away from the mentality of "live caller surveys are the gold standard". Is there a benefit to having a sample that is sourced via 25% online, 25% live call, 25% IVR, 25% Text messages? Are there diminishing returns to using more modes?
I'm sure you've covered it before, so if there are links that would be useful I would appreciate that.
Hi Elliott,
Since I started reading the free weekly newsletter and later subscribed to the blog, I gained a broader perspective on opinion polling. Using polling to help set the agenda and form policy is good democracy and not always for political expediency.
I always enjoy content on the health of democracy and democratic reform in the U.S.
-Elliot
How divided are we? President Joe said it's 25% of us against the rest of us. That's a lot of noise in the system from 25%, eh? What are the probabilities of the minority, assuming it is one, ruling the nation by voter suppression, gerrymandering, filibuster, Fox, violence, assault weapons, evil and stubborn courts and school textbook judges, defunding of public education, Covid-19? If what we need is national unity and purpose, what does it take to get a war on global warming?