Democrats and national security

The reports of polls suggesting that Democrats have a big disadvantage generally in national security affairs need to read carefully. For instance, Samantha Sondag in Study: Terrorist Attack Would Yield Fewer Votes for McCain Daily Californian 10/06/08:

Sen. John McCain's tough-on-terrorism stance has not impressed undecided political moderates, according to a study published Thursday by UC Berkeley researchers.

Robb Willer, an assistant professor of sociology, and Nick Adams, a graduate sociology student, found that 11 percent of undecided voters would not support McCain in the face of an imminent terrorist attack. The data-based on a sample group of more than 1,200 polled in late May-departed significantly from conventional wisdom linking heightened levels of terrorism to support for conservative leaders.

"We expected to find an increase in support for McCain," said Willer, who has conducted research on how terrorism affects the political preferences of the American public. His 2004 study found that President Bush's approval rating, as measured in Gallup polls, jumped an average of two to three points after the government issued terror warnings.

But Americans have since grown disenchanted with Bush's foreign policy, Willer said, adding that McCain's public association with the president could explain the surprising results.

I would add that one reason the results seem surprising is that the polls themselves aren't always designed to get at the details of public attitudes on national security. And the reporting is often terrible. The Establishment press, like the Democratic consultants, take it as accepted truth that the public doesn't trust Democrats on national security. And so they often don't bother to look very carefully, it seems, at the actual polling data.

But the survey reported in the article headline has to be interpreted, too. And there are other feasible interpretations. Sondag reports:

Ron Hassner, an assistant political science professor [at UC-Berkeley] who teaches the popular course "War!," said that while he has not seen the study, the finding "runs counter to the intuition of international security scholarship."

"Whether this is what voters would actually do, or merely what they mistakenly think they would do, if a terrorist attack happened is another question entirely," Hassner said in an e-mail. "As security threats go up, voters tend to adopt more hawkish positions and offer increasingly unconditional support for the government in power."

Tags: samantha sondag, terrorism