All week we heard how unpopular the the "bailout" was. Members of Congress, mostly Republicans, claimed that they were getting calls at a rate of 10,000,000 to 1 against the plan. lol
Of course this encouraged opponents to use that as an example to show that Americans were overwhelmingly against the plan.
But polling from the Pew Research Center (and other sources) tell a different story. (click audio tab from NPR page).
Thursday, October 02, 2008
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Did you link to the right study? I didn't see any questions specifically addressing the bailout plan (I scanned both the transcript and the report, and searched for "bailout" and "financial"). The only question I saw asked whether Obama or McCain were more qualified to handle our economic problems -- which is a much broader issue than just the bailout, and doesn't provide any information about the bailout anyway since both of them supported it.
Otherwise, I've heard that polls regarding the bailout have produced wildly different results, probably due to differences in how the question is phrased. That suggests to me that Americans don't have firm opinions about the plan.
Finally, politicians need to consider the strength of voter's opinions--if a small portion of voters strongly oppose the bailout (as indicated by their motivation to contact Congress), that can outweigh a large number of voters who are ambivalent, or weakly support the bailout.
Adam,
You have to click the audio link from the NPR page.
Thanks. I didn't catch that there were two separate stories on that page.
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