Daniel Ikenson of the Cato Institute read the report on the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll of likely Republican primary voters (59% of whom felt foreign trade had been bad for the U.S.) and found the poll wanting: Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, and a Media Happy to Abuse Them (Cato Online, Oct 4). He thinks the questions were badly phrased. Here's a correction that doesn't affect his key point: Correction to Yesterday’s Post, (Lies, Damn Lies,…) (Cato Online, Oct 5).
Here's my post on those poll results: Republican Primary Voter Trade Views (Ben Muse, Oct 6)
The WSJ/NBC poll results weren't the only ones released last week. The Pew Research Center also released a set of poll results with some information on U.S. trade attitudes. Ikenson reported on these as well: How Do Americans Really Feel about Trade? (Cato Online, Oct 5). Here we find that 64% of Republicans think trade has been a good thing for the U.S.
Ikenson thinks the reason for the difference may lie in the phrasing of the questions.
The Pew poll results, however, are no reason for satisfaction:
Two figures that appear to be credible from the Pew report are a bit disconcerting. The same question asked of Americans was also asked of citizens in 46 other countries. Positive views of trade were lowest in the United States. And the 59% holding positive views constitutes a huge drop off from 2002, when the same question from Pew found 78% of Americans holding positive views on trade.
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