In our continuing series on Why Polls Don't Matter, we look at the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll which says a minority of Americans think the Supreme Court is "too conservative."
About half of the public thinks the Supreme Court is generally balanced in its decisions, but a growing number of Americans say the court has become "too conservative" in the two years since President Bush began nominating justices, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Nearly a third of the public -- 31 percent -- thinks the court is too far to the right, a noticeable jump since the question was last asked in July 2005. That's when Bush nominated John G. Roberts Jr. to the court and, in the six-month period that followed, the Senate approved Roberts as chief justice and confirmed Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
The two have proved to be reliably conservative justices, and the increasingly polarized court this year moved to uphold restraints on abortion, restrict student speech rights and limit the ability of school districts to use race in student assignments, among other issues.
The public seems to have noticed the shift. The percentage who said the court is "too conservative" grew from 19 percent to 31 percent in the past two years, while those who said it is "generally balanced in its decisions" declined from 55 percent to 47 percent.
It's no wonder the public might have noticed a shift in the Supreme Court, considering the confirmation hearings of Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts were media circuses.
But is it earth-shattering news to say that "a growing number of Americans" think the court is too conservative, when that number is still well below half, and half of all Americans think the Court is fine?
Taking a page from Captain Ed's playbook, I decided to look at who the WaPo surveyed. Once again, the poll's sample under represents Republicans. In other words, the poll is skewed to support the idea that a "growing number of Americans" think the Supreme Court is too conservative. If your sample contains largely the sorts of people who support liberal ideas, of course they are going to disapprove of a court that's no longer wedded to the idea that the judiciary is a super-legislature that can just make shit up when it suits a particular need.
Yet, even this sample was split on how it felt about recent SCOTUS decisions.
Fifty-five percent of those polled -- including majorities of both women and men -- approved of the court's abortion ruling. The decision significantly shifted the court's abortion jurisprudence, marking the first time justices have upheld a restriction on a specific abortion procedure and one that does not include an exception for a woman's health.
But a majority disagreed with the court's decision that sharply restricted the ability of local school boards to use race when making school assignments to achieve diverse student bodies. Fifty-six percent of those polled disapproved of the decision; 40 percent approved.
Three out of four blacks disapproved of the court's ruling in the race case, as did a narrow majority of whites. Seven out of 10 Democrats disagreed with the ruling, while Republicans and independents both were evenly split.
Given that the sample is skewed, this would probably mean that most Americans actually approved of both cases, since, as Captain Ed points out, the sampling problem creates a 24% under representation of Republicans. And while the link shows an abortion-related question, there is no example of a question related to the Seattle and Louisville so-called "voluntary" integration plans cases. Depending on how the question was worded, there could be slant in that question to explain the numbers, as well.
This post is about the sample errors that regularly occur with the WaPo polls, but it could also be about liberal media bias. The headline for this story was Fewer See Balance in Court Decisions, which is accurate as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it doesn't accurately reflect what the poll numbers show: that most Americans do not feel the Court is too conservative. The lede does begin with the fact that most Americans are satisfied with the Supreme Court, but it doesn't explain that a liberal court has been in place 40 years and that tilting back to the right provides balance.
In short, the poll confirms what the WaPo wants its readers to think: that
Chuck Schumer is right when he says the Court is "dangerously out of balance." It's sad when even their polling is biased.
Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.
UPDATE: Think Progress is out there lying about what the Supreme Court holdings say.
In June, the court ruled that local school authorities "cannot take modest steps to bring public school students of different races together."
Of course, that's not what the Court held. What the Court said was
Kennedy said that race could perhaps be considered in the tools that school districts use to bring "together students of diverse backgrounds and races." He mentioned magnet schools, "strategic site selection" of new schools, redrawing attendance zones and other measures.
Sounds different, doesn't it?
|