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Poll want regulation { July 1 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8418-2002Jul1.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8418-2002Jul1.html
Post/ABC Poll: Americans Want Tighter Regulation of Business
Neither Party Gaining Traction on Issue
By Richard Morin and Claudia Deane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 1, 2002; 12:54 PM
Also Today:
• Public: Keep God in the Pledge
• High Court's Views on Polling
• The Poll Vault, 1939: Views on Premarital Sex
Americans are demanding tighter government regulation of business and believe that the multi-billion dollar irregularities recently discovered in the financial reports of WorldCom, Enron and other large companies signal a broader problem with the way American businesses keep their books, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
But the survey also suggests that neither political party currently is seen as significantly better than the other in dealing with corporate financial wrongdoing, though congressional Democrats are somewhat more likely to be trusted than President Bush to handle the issue.
Overall, the poll suggests the recent scandals have increased public demands for government regulation of major corporations, though not necessarily for new laws.
More than six in 10 Americans – 63 percent – believe that government regulation of big business corporations is "necessary to protect the public," up 10 percentage points from a 1998 survey by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University. Only 30 percent said government regulations do "more harm than good," also down 10 percentage points.
But the public is not yet convinced that new laws are needed. Slightly more than half – 53 percent – said the best way to deal with these problems is better enforcement of existing laws while three in 10 say new laws are needed to regulate how companies report their financial conditions.
One big reason for the skepticism is that the public believes that recent irregularities reflect more fundamental problems with the way American corporations do business. Three in four said wrongdoing by Enron, WorldCom and other corporations are "a sign of broader problems with the way many companies report their finances." Fewer than one in four said these scandals are "pretty much isolated incidents."
The survey, conducted Wednesday through Sunday, suggests that the latest scandals may have done little to shake public confidence in large business corporations. But that's largely because most Americans traditionally have expressed little or no confidence in big business.
In the latest Post-ABC News poll, fewer than one in four – 23 percent – said they had a "great deal" or "quite a lot of confidence" in large corporations – little changed from the 22 percent that expressed similar sentiments in 1991. Three in four said they had "some" or "very little" confidence.
The survey found that 42 percent of those interviewed said they trusted Democrats in Congress to do a better job "making sure that large business corporations properly account for their financial situation" while 36 percent said they trusted Bush.
The public also said they trusted the Democratic Party (37 percent) more than the Republican Party (34 percent) to ensure that corporations are honest with the public about their financial condition.
Together, the survey results offer new evidence that the financial accounting scandals may offer some advantage to Democrats as the parties battle for control of Congress in the November elections.
The results are particularly striking since the public has consistently preferred Bush and, to a lesser extent, the Republican Party to handle economic matters. In last week's Battleground survey, GOP pollster Ed Goeas and Democrat Celinda Lake reported that Bush and the Republican Party enjoyed advantages over Democrats when voters were asked which they most trusted to keep the country prosperous.
The Battleground survey was conducted before disclosures last week that WorldCom had misreported $3.9 billion in revenue and dramatically overstating its earnings.
Whether the Democrats can exploit the issue remains uncertain: The election is four months away and the public is not yet thinking about politics. The Middle East remains unstable, a war with Iraq looms and concern about terrorism at home remains high. (Several recent surveys suggest voters are turning away from terrorism and international problems and paying more attention to domestic issues.)
And it's unclear how effective Democrats will be in using the recent corporate scandals to their advantage in House races, which are typically won on local and not national or international concerns.
A total of 1,024 randomly selected adults were interviewed for this survey. The questions asking preference for Bush over congressional Democrats and the Republican Party over the Democratic Party to handle the issue of corporate financial irregularities were alternately asked of different halves of the full sample.
Margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus three percentage points and plus or minus 5 percentage points for the half-samples.
Judge Not that Ye Not be Judged
Americans appear ready to send those federal judges in California to burn in the fires of hell for last week's decision to prohibit children in public schools from saying the two words "under God" when they recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
More than eight in 10 – 84 percent said they disapproved of that ruling while 14 percent supported it, according to the latest Post-ABC News poll. An even larger proportion -- 89 percent -- said the phrase should remain in the pledge, while 10 percent said it should be removed.
The Supremes Weigh in on Polling
Polling had its day in the U.S. Supreme Court, sort of.
In Atkins v. Virginia, the high court ruled that the Constitution bars the execution of mentally retarded offenders. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the 6-to-3 majority, noted in a footnote that "polling data shows a widespread consensus among Americans, even those who support the death penalty, that executing the mentally retarded is wrong." A sampling of about 20 state and national surveys on the issue was included in the appendix to the majority opinion.
That brief mention brought a volcanic rejoinder from Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist in his formal dissent.
"Even if I were to accept the legitimacy of the Court's decision to reach beyond the product of legislatures and practices of sentencing juries to discern a national standard of decency, I would take issue with the blind-faith credence it accords the opinion polls brought to our attention," Rehnquist wrote.
"An extensive body of social science literature describes how methodological and other errors can affect the reliability and validity of estimates about the opinions and attitudes of a population derived from various sampling techniques. Everything from variations in the survey methodology, such as the choice of the target population, the sampling design used, the questions asked, and the statistical analyses used to interpret the data can skew the results. . . . Looking at the polling data (reproduced in the Appendix to this opinion) in light of these factors, one cannot help but observe how unlikely it is that the data could support a valid inference about the question."
The Chief Justice wasn't alone. In his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia noted with typical smash-mouth style:
"But the Prize for the Court's Most Feeble Effort to fabricate 'national consensus' must go to its appeal (deservedly relegated to a footnote) to the views of assorted professional and religious organizations, members of the so-called 'world community' and respondents to opinion polls. . . . I agree with the Chief Justice . . . that the views of professional and religious organizations and the results of opinion polls are irrelevant."
Ironically, polls on the issue of executing mentally handicapped are hugely consistent and overwhelmingly opposed, as Stevens correctly noted. Makes one wonder if Rehnquist might be peeved with polling for all of those naughty surveys that showed nobody can name the Chief Justice.
From The Poll Vault: Is Premarital Sex Unfortunate or Wicked?
It was a slow day in the newsroom when we wondered (er, one of us wondered): What was the first poll question ever asked about sex?
So we searched (er, the more curious of us searched) the Roper Center's iPoll online archive to locate a short list of contenders, which included this intriguing question from a 1939 survey by the Roper Organization for Fortune magazine.
(Asked of men only by men interviewers) Do you consider it all right, unfortunate, or wicked when young girls have sexual relations before marriage?
All right 11%
Unfortunate 52
Wicked 28
Don't know 9
(Asked of women only by women interviewers) Do you consider it all right, unfortunate, or wicked when young men have sexual relations before marriage?
All right 10%
Unfortunate 35
Wicked 47
Don't know 7
Source: Survey by Fortune magazine conducted by Roper Organization during September, 1939 and based on personal interviews with a national adult sample of 5,146. Data provided by The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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