Drilling for Opinions

Our blogger friend Bryan of Why Now? alerts everyone in a recent comment at the end of this post that Northwest Florida's hapless congressman, Jeff Miller, is running a silly poll on his official web site. Miller's poll asks the rock-stupid question, "Do you support drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and natural gas?"

Of course, had the question been worded otherwise the results would be different. Consider an alternative polling question:

"Should we let oil companies drill offshore in hopes of knocking a few cents off every barrel of oil in ten or twenty years, or should we increase energy conservation now to protect the sugar white sands of Pensacola Beach?"

The very kind of "deceptive poll" Miller is running -- "with no mention made of either possible environmental trade-offs or of the long time it might take for expanded oil drilling to actually produce more oil" -- just happens to be the precise point former Gallup vice-president David Moore is making today in a guest article on Kevin Drum's blog.

Clearly the public wants the government to do something about the energy problem, and when presented with an isolated proposal — with no mention made of either possible environmental trade-offs or of the long time it might take for expanded oil drilling to actually produce more oil — the proposal sounds good. But that doesn't mean people are not willing to consider trade-offs or other approaches.
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[T]he polls give the erroneous impression that the vast majority of Americans have a clear opinion — with zero percent undecided, according to CNN, and no more than 10 percent according to other polls. And that opinion favors expanded offshore oil drilling.

Do you believe these polls? Moore asks. "I don't," he says.

If you'd like to know more, polling expert David Moore's new book "The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls" has just been published.