Lets look at two differently worded examples of the same question. We will use the Expanded or “Universal Background Checks” issue as the subject for obvious reasons.
Here’s how the question is worded when the poll is paid for by a particular anti rights group or even media outlet that commissions the polling company to produce the results they seek.
1) In order to prevent criminals, terrorists and the mentally deranged from easily obtaining firearms, do you support or oppose Legislation that requires background checks be completed on every person that attempts to acquire a firearm?
Worded that way it should be no surprise, and its not at all newsworthy that the answers would be overwhelmingly in support of such a law, perhaps even the 90 % range of support the President, Anti-Gun Groups and their shills in the media have been claiming.
Because even those that fall squarely on the side of support for Gun Rights, as well as the “fence sitters” and “FUDS” that are really ambivalent about the topic still want to keep bad people from doing bad things.
But lets look at the same question, worded differently, and in such a way that is actually representative of what the defeated Manchin-Toomey Amendment would have made law.
1) In an effort to make it more difficult for criminals, the mentally ill and possibly terrorists from obtaining weapons, do you support or oppose Legislation that would require mandatory background checks for every person attempting to acquire a firearm , even during private sales, trades or transfers amongst people that are well known to each other, such as co-workers, distant relatives, long time neighbors and or friends, even though numerous studies have shown that criminals most often obtain their weapons from black market sales and from theft then any other source ?
Worded that way, chances are better than good that you would see support for such a law plummet. For understandable reasons. Its instinctive to immediately recognize how ridiculous it would be to require that people submit to such a law, particularly when they have long established connections with the prospective purchaser or transferee, especially in light of the fact that criminals already acquire their weapons from sources that “universal background checks” would never apply to anyway.
By the way, the industry jargon for the careful wording of poll questions to get the desired answers to support a pre-ordained, paid for result*is known as “push polling”.
That is why polls such as those paid for and marketed (really a self congratulatory circle jerk) by Anti Gun Groups like MAIG (Mayors Against Illegal Guns), a poll that claimed that 2/3rds majority of NRA Members supported Universal Background Checks are so suspect.
Selection Bias.
The NRA doesn’t publish or release the membership information, so how can MAIG be reasonably certain that those polled actually were in fact NRA Members ? They CANT!
