Thread by @teemoneyusa

HEY REPORTERS: What to know when interpreting polling on abortion over the next week - it'll be confusing🧵

1) After 100s of focus groups and scores of surveys on abortion - here's the bottom line rn. About 50% to 75% of adults support abortion rights and access. Among VOTERS, it's higher - about 60% to 75%. Why? They want people having control over these decisions, not the gov't.

2) What you know about opinion comes from very few polls: nyt, wapo, cnn, pew, gallup. These researchers are brilliant, but they only ask surface Qs on abortion. Mostly tracking Qs, which ironically, aren't the Qs to detect major shifts in opinion.

3) Also, these researchers are NOT doing focus groups / qual research - listening to people. So they aren't measuring MANY aspects of opinion on the issue. Here are just a few Qs we've asked - straight from the mouths of ordinary people.

4) The Q below is a no-no in polling - having two concepts in one Q. But we still asked it because it's how people think and talk.

5) As an aside, sometimes I think understanding opinion on abortion is this simple:

6) So, when reporters are only seeing a handful of questions, and the sources come from respected, smart researchers (asking limited Qs from limited views), they are likely to report things like this:

7) And be wrong. A few weeks after this story came out, I had an opportunity to ask this Q 👇(Also repeated it a few months ago - found 77% RV saying no)

8) Do people think abortion is a complex issue, based on each person's circumstances? Absolutely. Do most voters struggle with their position on abortion? They do not.

9) Of course we wouldn't know that - from images alone! (Screenshot from my phone last night). Let alone continuing the (inaccurate) narrative that the country is divided and the issue is polarizing

10) In fact, the country is not divided. Most support Roe, most support access. Most don't think about this issue until election time - because they don't hear about it until then. It's not polarizing. It's just that everyone *thinks* everyone thinks it's polarizing.

11) We're about to see a flurry of polling about Roe, 15 week bans, 6 week bans, etc. My guess is that 95% of these Qs will not ask a key follow-up Q that would entirely change our sense of opinion.....

12) Lemme demonstrate. From our recent poll of voters, we replicated a standard Gallup tracking Q that requires respondents to choose legal or illegal:

13) Then we asked a *follow up* of that 57% who responded "illegal:"

14) Here's what we found - just 38% remain in the illegal camp. 62% say legal or don't pass a law/stay out

15) Here's another example on 15 week bans (see what we learn when offering an explicit "don't know")

16) This is replicating a Marist / Knights of Columbus poll, which produced headlines claiming most Americans want substantial abortion restrictions:

17) When we asked a follow-up, we found a majority of respondents said they do NOT want politicians to pass new laws that reflect their response in previous question (!!). view.publitas.com/perryundem-res…

18) Another example of how these tracking polls get it wrong: Gallup finds forever the public is "divided" between "pro-choice" and "pro-life" people. But, actually, almost four in ten don't identify with either label (fun survey with @sarahkliff !!)

19) And another:

20) On a side note, what does this mean: "when the woman doesn't want the child for any reason"? And on a side note to a side note, chances are 99% that an older white man wrote this question in about 1973 and it's been asked ever since.

21) So... these data are confusing if you haven't been conducting qualitative research (which 99.9% of people have not!). Because when you listen to what people say, and measure those sentiments, it becomes much clearer - for most, it's about who has power over these decisions.

22) But if you rely only on a handful of survey Qs, you may understandably come to @Nate_Cohn's (inaccurate) conclusion:

23) And you'd miss the forest for the trees - if not be flat out wrong.

24) Finally, what's underpinning opinion? 3 things: Views toward when life begins, control over decisions, and....what else you won't see in these standard polls....views toward women and power: