Spring Discontent?
Gallup Polls over the last month have shown drops in the public's approval of Congress, consumer attitudes about the economy, satisfaction with the way things are going in the United States, and approval of the job President George W. Bush is doing. Most other publicly released polls have confirmed these findings. It appears the nation is suffering through a period of discontent at the moment.
Gallup's April 4-7 poll shows no significant signs of improvement. Satisfaction with the way things are going in the United States remains low (38%), the majority of Americans (56%) say economic conditions are getting worse, and only 38% of Americans say they approve of the way Congress is doing its job.
There has been a slight change in attitudes toward Bush, whose job approval rating has been edging back up over the last two weeks after falling to an administration low of 45% in the March 21-23 poll. Approval is now at 50%.
Why are Americans in such a slump? The answer could be at least partially tied to the highly publicized deaths of Terri Schiavo and Pope John Paul II. I believe it is reasonable to assume both have had an impact, at least in the short term.
The pope's death directly affected the 25% of Americans who are Roman Catholic, for whom the pope serves as spiritual leader. And the death of John Paul II indirectly affected many of the non-Catholics who watched the news coverage of the mourning and the papal funeral.
A Republican pollster with whom I recently appeared on a cable news program rejected rather quickly the idea that the Schiavo situation helped cause the drop in Bush's job approval rating. It appeared to be more convenient for him blame oil and gas prices.
I disagree. It's certainly probable that the increase in the cost of gas is not helping the public's views of Bush. Neither are the currently anemic attitudes toward the economy across a wide variety of Gallup measures. But I remain convinced the Schiavo situation created a real problem for Bush and the Republicans, based in part on a strong consensus across various surveys that Bush and Congress' involvement in the controversy was a bad thing. The numbers are unequivocal in Gallup's most recent poll: 76% of Americans say Congress should not have been involved.
Most Important Problem
In addition to the deaths of the pope and Schiavo, there have been many other stories dominating the news in recent weeks -- including energy prices, Social Security, and the Michael Jackson trial.
But all in all, no one issue dominates Americans' responses to Gallup question: "What's the most important problem racing the country today?" It's a little bit of a smorgasbord. In terms of single categories mentioned, the Iraq war, the economy, fuel/energy prices, Social Security, and terrorism top the list of problems. Overall, mentions of economic issues are up slightly, while mentions of Iraq are down.
The New Pope
The Vatican is now shifting its focus toward selecting the new pope, and the direction in which that pope will lead the Catholic Church in the years ahead.
There are more than a billion Catholics across the world and it's impossible to accurately assess what they all want from their new leader. But we certainly can look at the attitudes and beliefs of Catholics in the United States, and here we find a fascinating microcosm of the challenges faced by the Vatican.
Gallup data suggest that there is a core group of American Catholics who attend church frequently and have quite conservative positions on many key moral issues. At the other end of the spectrum, there is a group of Catholics who seldom or never go to church and are quite liberal on moral issues.
We don't know whether these more liberal Catholics avoid church just because they disagree with official church positions on issues, but that's a reasonable presumption that such disagreement plays a role in their lack of involvement with the church. It's possible that a pope with more liberal stances on moral issues could bring some of these lapsed Catholics into the fold. But would a liberal pope risk losing the current core of committed Catholics? That's the dilemma.
On a different note, the degree to which Catholics now resemble Americans overall. Catholics are no more or no less likely to go to church than non-Catholics, and are remarkably similar across most demographic categories. To be sure, Catholics are strongly overrepresented among Hispanics in this country, and the data confirm Catholics are disproportionately likely to live in the East and not live in the South. But otherwise, Catholics appear to be a random sample of the entire population.
Question Wording
Almost everything news-related is under scrutiny these days, particularly as has been pointed out ad nauseam, as a result of the flourishing "blogosphere" in which online watchdogs monitor almost everything that goes on in the public sphere and quickly point out anything controversial.
Polling is part of this whole process. In recent weeks, there has been criticism of the questions pollsters have asked about the Schiavo situation and we here at Gallup have received some mild criticism about our historical trend questions concerning homosexuality.
I've talked about the Schiavo questions previously. Most polls described Schiavo's situation to respondents and then asked their opinion of it. Because much of the Schiavo controversy itself revolved around the definition of her medical condition, it's not surprising that people would be sensitive to the way pollsters define it.
In Gallup's April 1-2 poll, however, we conducted a scientific test, which showed the inclusion or exclusion of the phrase "persistent vegetative state" had no impact on people's responses to questions about Schiavo. A majority of Americans supported the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube regardless of how her condition was described. (It's also of interest to note that opposition levels to the removal of the tube climbed from 31% in mid-March to 41% in early April.)
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) recently contacted Gallup concerning our questions about homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Several Gallup trend questions include the word "homosexual": "Do you think marriages between homosexuals should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages?" and "Do you think homosexual relations between consenting adults should or should not be legal?" As GLAAD Executive Director Joan M. Garry said in an e-mail to Gallup: "It ["the term 'homosexual'"] objectifies gay and lesbian people and applies an outdated, stigmatizing clinical label -- one that's taken on pejorative connotations -- to a category of people who, with rare exceptions, don't self-identify that way."
Gallup's response to this criticism is twofold. First, these are trend questions. The wording we use was developed years ago when Gallup first asked the questions. The ability to monitor change over time is based on holding everything constant except time, particularly the question wording. If we changed the wording and then found a change in responses, we wouldn't know if the change was due to the change in wording or an actual change in people's attitudes. That doesn't mean Gallup never changes question wording, but we are very careful when we do.
That leads to the second point. It is reasonable to consider changing a trend question if there are significant and widespread objections to some element of the initial question wording. Although GLAAD is a reputable advocacy group for gay and lesbian causes, it certainly cannot claim to represent the views of all gay and lesbian Americans -- any more than AARP can claim to represent the views of all older Americans. Ideally, we would like to have survey data allowing us to measure attitudes toward the term "homosexual" among all gays and lesbians. But reliable surveys of the nation's gay and lesbian population are hard to come by.
NRA
The National Rifle Association holds its annual meeting this week in Houston. Incoming NRA President Sandra S. Froman created some controversy last week when she proposed arming school officials as a way of lowering school violence. "I'm not saying that that means every teacher should have a gun or not, but what I am saying is we need to look at all the options at what will truly protect the students."
Now NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre has backed away from Froman's statement according to the Houston Chronicle, which quotes LaPierre as saying the NRA is "...not backing national legislation to arm teachers."
LaPierre's statement would fit well with the views of the American public, only 22% of whom agree that arming school officials would make schools safer. There is slightly more positive sentiment about the impact of arming judges -- 43% of Americans say this would make courtrooms safer, while 50% say it would make them more dangerous. Arming judges has been discussed after man on trial for rape in Atlanta killed a judge, sheriff's deputies, and other bystanders, and a disgruntled plaintiff shot and killed a judge's husband and mother in Chicago. A majority of Americans (62%) are in favor of arming airplane pilots.
Tax Time
Friday is Tax Day and tax returns are due by midnight, unless one files for an extension.
One thing is clear. It looks like there will be fewer people lined up to mail tax forms at the neighborhood post offices at midnight on Friday. Why? More and more Americans are filing electronically. The percentage of Americans who file electronically has shown a straight upward trend across the last eight years, from 15% in 1997 to 44%. The percentage of Americans filing by mail has dropped from 77% to 43%, so electronic filing is now just as common. (The rest of those Gallup interviewed said they don't know how they will file or the question doesn't apply to them.)
The IRS has continued to focus on bringing tax cheats to justice. IRS Commissioner Mark Everson recently announced three new initiatives which would "allow the IRS to … pursue cheating by high-income individuals and corporations, continue our attack on abusive tax shelters, bolster our criminal investigation efforts and assist with other enforcement priorities."
Americans aren't necessarily convinced. Only 30% say it's becoming harder to cheat on one's taxes, while 21% say its becoming easier. The rest say things haven't changed either way. Americans with higher incomes are less likely than Americans with more modest incomes to say it has become harder to cheat.