Ramesh Ponnuru complains about yesterday’s Rasmussen poll on stem cells:
The other day I commented on the poor quality of polling on stem-cell research. I’m afraid that the Rasmussen poll, cited in today’s web briefing, is no exception. Here’s the question they use: “President Obama has decided to lift the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Do you agree or disagree with President Obama’s decision?”
Rasmussen also reports that 40 percent of those surveyed say they have followed the debate “very closely.” No estimate is given for the percentage of those respondents who are lying.
I wonder what the problem with the question is supposed to be? In the past, conservatives have complained when pundits and pollsters talked about “stem cells” rather than “embryonic stem cells,” but the Rasmussen question is clear on that point. Is the problem that “lift the ban” isn’t specific enough, since the Bush ban wasn’t absolute? Beats me. The Rasmussen question is very, very simple and neutral and avoids all the issues in Ponnuru’s previous post on the subject, so I’m not sure what the problem is.
But there always seems to be something. Conservatives seem to be endlessly convinced that the American public would be opposed to embryonic stem cell research if only it was made graphically clear to them that this means embryos are destroyed in the process. But there’s just not much evidence of that. Most of us know that embryos get destroyed, and most of us don’t think that’s a big problem.
On the other hand, I sympathize with his closing paragraph. 40% is actually not too unreasonable a figure, but it’s remarkable the number of polls that ask very recondite questions and get something like a 90% response rate. “Do you think American banks are undercapitalized and should be nationalized” will get, say, 50% in favor and 40% opposed, despite the fact that it’s a dead certainty that 80% of Americans have no idea what “undercapitalized” means and only a vague notion of what nationalization is. But the results are taken seriously anyway.
